ISGW 06

Chapter 6

The Nightmare Forest, and Shuriel (1)

“Stop right there!!”

Running was one thing she was confident in. At first, the pickpocket in the brown cloak had mocked the teenage girl chasing him, skillfully dodging this way and that. But when he realized that her running speed was no joke, he began seriously running toward the alleys.

She chased only the pickpocket through the complicated alleys she had never seen before. For a moment, she thought she was closing the distance, but the pickpocket slipped through the maze-like streets as if they were his own playground. If only he would run into a dead end even once. But contrary to Harin’s wish, the long, winding alleys seemed to have no end.

“I said stop!!”

“Damn, that girl is persistent!”

Cursing, the pickpocket continued running toward an open alley. Suddenly, a black figure appeared in front of him, grabbed him by the back of his neck, and slammed him to the ground. The pickpocket was left sprawled there, too confused to understand what had happened.

It had been a long thirty-minute chase.

Harin approached the man holding the pickpocket down with his knee and let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you! I thought I was definitely going to lose him!”

“Rather than thanking me… I got robbed too.”

The man had black hair that fell just over the back of his neck and wore a long, black traveler’s robe. While still sitting there and holding down the pickpocket, he searched through the pickpocket’s brown cloak and threw the stolen items onto the ground.

An apple, bread, keys…

The pickpocket’s cloak seemed to spit out all kinds of things. Then, when Harin’s familiar pouch landed in front of her, she quickly picked it up.

It seemed the man had taken out almost everything he could find, but he still had not found what he was looking for. Without letting go of the pickpocket, the black-robed man asked,

“Hey, little thief. Where’s my wallet?”

“Search all you want! You won’t find it on me!”

The pickpocket seemed quite offended by being caught and pinned to the ground. Instead of showing any remorse, he angrily snapped back.

“Your wallet was pretty fat, so I moved it somewhere else a long time ago. You won’t find it. Never~.”

He mocked the man loudly for a while, then even spat on the ground.

“Ptooey! What a lousy day!”

For a moment, Harin wondered whether she should simply leave now that she had recovered her money or stay and watch the two argue until the end.

She also hesitated over whether she should thank the man one more time before leaving. Then she remembered that Asbel might already be angry and waiting for her.

Quietly, she turned around and began walking back the way she had come.

At the pickpocket’s shameless and insulting behavior, the black-haired man lowered his head and let out a low laugh.

“You think you’re having a lousy day? Heh heh heh…”

His reaction was so far from what an ordinary person would have expected that the pickpocket suddenly wondered if he had run into a crazy man.

“I’m the one having a lousy day. I came to Britton and immediately found myself with no money for a room, so it looks like I’m going to have to sleep on the streets…”

Harin, who had been walking away, stopped when she heard him.

For some reason, her conscience would not let her pretend she had not heard him and simply walk away.

“W-What do you want me to do?! Go ahead and gut me! Gut me, I said!”

Hearing the pickpocket’s ear-piercing screams, Harin approached the black-haired man and spoke.

“Um…”

The man seemed to have completely forgotten about Harin while struggling with the pickpocket. He looked up at her with a puzzled expression, apparently unaware that she had stayed behind instead of leaving.

Harin took ten silver coins from her pouch and held them out to him.

The man stared at her in confusion.

“Pardon?”

“No, I mean… You caught him when I almost couldn’t, so…”

Worried that he might take it the wrong way, Harin awkwardly trailed off. Then she turned around and hurried out of the alley, calling over her shoulder,

“I hope you get your lodging sorted out!”

“…”

The man stared at Harin as she disappeared into the alley, the coins still in his hand.

When the strength holding him down loosened, the pickpocket quickly got to his feet and ran toward the back of the alley, leaving behind a string of curses.

Harin wandered between the city’s many buildings and finally found the Blue Song Inn after the sun had set.

Asbel and Leod had probably already finished dinner and gone to their room, because neither of them was in the dining hall on the first floor.

After asking an inn employee, Harin found Room 205, which Asbel was using, and knocked on the door.

Knock, knock.

“It’s me, Harin.”

When she opened the door and entered, she saw Asbel and Leod sitting with a map spread out before them.

Asbel had been studying the map with a serious expression. When she saw Harin enter, she gestured for her to sit down.

“You came late, so you missed the explanation. I’ll go over it again. This is what we have to do here tomorrow, once the sun comes up.”

Asbel pointed to their current location on the map.

“This is Britton, where we are now. And Rosenford, where the Asura were spotted, is over here.”

Between the two cities was a large, black area representing a forest. Even its name was ominous.

The Nightmare Forest.

Asbel first traced a route around the forest from Britton to Rosenford with her finger.

“If we take the long way around, it will take seven to eight days. That’s far too much time wasted. So I’ve decided we’re going to do this instead.”

This time, she moved her finger along the route that went straight through the Nightmare Forest from Britton to Rosenford.

“If we go straight through the forest instead of going around it, it will only take three days. We can’t ignore a route that cuts the travel time down this much. The competition with the Red Mane tribe to track down the Divine Relic is a race against time.”

Asbel spoke firmly. Then she looked straight at Harin.

“I heard the Nightmare Forest is a dangerous place, just as its name suggests. So we need information. That’s what we’re doing tomorrow. We need to gather enough information to make it through the Nightmare Forest.”

Even the name alone made the place feel ominous.

Harin was not eager to go there, but it was difficult to object to a plan that had already been decided.

Knowing Asbel’s personality, Harin felt she had no choice but to go along with whatever Asbel decided to do.

As soon as the sun rose, they ate a quick breakfast and split up.

Britton was a huge city with many people coming and going, so they decided to gather information in different places.

Harin headed toward the market where she had been pickpocketed the day before, staying alert so it would not happen again.

She looked around, wondering where she might find someone who could tell her about the Nightmare Forest.

Fortunately, Britton was a city visited by many travelers.

“The Nightmare Forest… you mean? That’s no place for people to go. If you don’t want to die, find somewhere else to go.”

“I’ve seen several people who went in and came back crazy. They said dead ghosts chased them and tried to hang them.”

“In short, it’s like a hallucination. The air surrounding that forest acts like a hallucinogen and makes people lose their minds.”

That last statement came from a plump merchant who was busy taking boxes of goods out and stacking them up for business.

“A hallucinogen?”

“Yeah. That’s what causes confusion in the brain. You see things that aren’t there and feel things as if you’re touching them even though they can’t be touched…”

It was the most specific information Harin had heard so far, so she leaned forward and listened carefully.

“Then do you know how to get through the forest safely?”

“I’d normally tell you not to go in because there’s no way to do it safely…”

The merchant glanced at Harin’s face, then cleared his throat.

“Ahem. But you look pretty desperate, so I’ll tell you how.”

“How?”

The merchant narrowed his eyes and looked around. Then he rummaged through one of the stacked boxes and pulled out a round red potion.

“Fairy blood. You know fairies are a powerful race of mages, right? If you drink this, powerful mana will temporarily flow through your body, giving you abilities beyond those of an ordinary human. For example, your brain won’t be fooled by mere hallucinations. It takes three or four days to get through the forest, and the effect will easily last that long.”

“Really…?”

“This has been proven by an adventurer who traveled through the Nightmare Forest. This is from him, too. He’s an excellent adventurer and warrior who has actually visited the forest where the fairies live. Of course, he got this blood from a fairy he captured himself.”

The merchant looked Harin up and down.

“You don’t look like you have much money, so I won’t charge you much. Just one gold.”

“One gold… That’s ten thousand sel, right?”

Considering that she needed enough for herself, Asbel, and Leod, it was far more than the amount of money she had.

Harin doubted whether the merchant was telling the truth, but even after asking people for half a day, he was the only person who had given her any information about how to pass through the Nightmare Forest.

She was wondering whether she should tell the merchant to wait while she went to get Asbel when he misunderstood her hesitation as being caused by the price.

Putting on a generous expression, he said,

“Fine… You look like you’re in a difficult situation, so I’ll lower it to eighty silver. You won’t find this precious fairy blood anywhere else for this price…”

“Fairy blood? You’re going to drink something like that?”

At the unfamiliar man’s voice, Harin, who had been deep in thought, suddenly raised her head.

When she turned around, she saw the black-robed man from yesterday. He had an expression that said he had just heard something ridiculous.

“Drinking fairy blood to gain abilities is nonsense. Besides, you caught a fairy in Isillie Forest, where ‘the’ Fairy King lives? I’d love to see the face of the fearless adventurer who would go down in history for doing that.”

The merchant, startled by the man’s sudden interruption, turned red with anger.

“Who the hell are you, barging in and interfering with my business?!”

“What business?”

The black-robed man shrugged as if the whole thing were amusing.

“You’re calling something that isn’t fairy blood ‘fairy blood,’ and claiming it has effects that it doesn’t have.”

“W-What…?!”

“Isn’t that called a scam rather than a business deal?”

His mocking words hit the mark.

Realizing he had been exposed, the merchant cursed under his breath. He angrily picked up his goods and moved to another spot, shouting as he went,

“You’ll regret this, young lady! You just missed a huge opportunity today!”

Harin stared blankly at the merchant’s retreating back as he waved his arms and disappeared.

“You were just about to get scammed.”

The man had approached her at some point and was smiling brightly as he spoke.

“Oh… Um… Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. From the moment I first saw you yesterday, you looked like such a naive young lady who knew absolutely nothing about the world. I figured scammers would flock to you.”

Harin’s face turned red with embarrassment when she realized that was how other people saw her.

“So we’re even now, right?”

“Pardon?”

“Yesterday and today. You and me—we’re even~.”

Harin realized he was referring to the silver coins she had given him yesterday when he had no money for lodging.

“Oh, I-I suppose we are. Thank you. Well, I’ll be going now…”

From the moment he had called her naive, Harin had felt embarrassed, and she hurried to leave the area.

Or at least, she thought she had started walking.

The man suddenly grabbed the strap of her bag from behind, preventing her from moving forward. Harin ended up kicking at empty air.

Completely dumbfounded, she turned her head with wide eyes and looked at the man holding onto her bag.

She had not noticed it yesterday, but the man was extremely tall.

Harin herself was in the upper 160s centimeters and certainly was not short, yet he still seemed quite tall to her. She guessed he was probably in the mid-180s.

When their eyes met, he gave her a gentle smile.

His green eyes were so beautiful that she almost forgot how absurd the situation was, with him holding onto her bag.

Without realizing it, Harin stared at his face for a moment, caught by the strange feeling.

Then he asked her,

“You’re traveling, aren’t you? Where are you headed?”

“Rosenford. But we’re short on time, so we’re planning to go through the Nightmare Forest.”

His eyes widened as if she had just told him something strange.

“The Nightmare Forest? Why are you going through there? It’s dangerous. It would be better not to go…”

“Do you know how to get through the Nightmare Forest?”

Harin asked him that, but she had not asked with any real expectation.

She had already spent half a day hearing from different travelers that there was no way to safely pass through the Nightmare Forest. Then she had even encountered a scammer trying to deceive her.

By then, she had simply given up and accepted that there was no way.

Instead of answering, he stared at her face.

Harin had not been expecting much and was only wondering when he would finally let go of her bag.

Then the man smiled brightly and answered,

“Yes. I’ll take you to Rosenford.”