Chapter 11 — A Long Road Ahead

Roaming another world is not the romantic affair it is made out to be. Between the stirring tales of ruins, magic, giant beasts, and heroes, what one must face far more often are practical matters—camping out in the wild, and how to fill one's belly.

The flight had been all haste from the start. After the castle was breached and they had fought to the last beside the final few household guards, no one could possibly have found the time to pack a satchel stuffed with dry rations. And the place from which they had finally set out was the ancestral tomb—a spot that by no stretch of the imagination looked like it stored food...

So when Amber's stomach growled, everyone realized the pressing reality of the situation.

All around them was wasteland, so bare that not a blade of grass grew on it. On the far side of the slope lay the Cecil domain, now reduced to a sea of fire and ruins, but somewhat farther down this side of the hill stood a dense forest.

In this place—a medieval world touched by magic—a forest beyond the town walls was synonymous with danger. Where the light of civilization could not reach, there were nothing but wild beasts, bandits, and monsters. Yet the forest also meant something else: more food to be had.

And to reach the northern town of Tansang, they had no choice but to pass through that forest.

At the forest's edge the party found a flat, open patch to rest, and then began to divide up the work of finding food.

Gao Yang first glanced at that muddle-headed little maid. This girl called Betty truly lacked any presence, but her courage was considerable—she had not even cried when the dragon flew over. Of course, it was also possible she had been frightened witless and simply failed to react. Even now the girl was tightly clutching that frying pan, standing in place somewhat nervously; noticing Gao Yang's gaze, she shrank her neck a little.

"Betty, Heidi, Rebecca—you three stay here. Byron, you stay behind as guard," Gao Yang said. "The rest of you come hunting with me. Including you, Amber."

Betty had no fighting ability. As spellcasters, Heidi and Rebecca were a different matter, but neither was suited to chasing beasts through a forest, and they had drained a great deal of energy besides. Since the battle in the castle they had had no chance to meditate and recover, and for casters who needed a sound mental state to bring out their full strength, that was a fatal problem. Better that they stay and hold the camp; if they could replenish their mana quickly, the road ahead would be a bit safer.

The three loyal family soldiers naturally had no complaints about the arrangements, but Amber's eyes went wide. "Why do I have to go too? I'm tired as well!"

Gao Yang shot her a glare. "Feel your ears—you're at least half elf. You can't come hunt in the woods with me? And you call yourself the descendant of people who lived in trees?"

Amber pursed her lips, resentment written all over her. "That's racial prejudice, you know. Who told you elves have to hunt in forests? I studied stealth, not forestry..."

"You dug up my grave."

Amber: "...Fine."

Gao Yang led three soldiers and one half-elf who claimed she could not hunt off into the forest, leaving the ever-faithful knight Byron and the three ladies to watch over the temporary camp.

After expending what little magic she had left to lay down a few warning runes, Heidi sat wearily on a stone, while Rebecca took Betty on a circuit within the perimeter guarded by Sir Byron, then came back carrying a small bundle of dry branches she had gathered nearby.

After piling the branches on the ground, Rebecca stepped back two paces, raised her staff, and chanted the most basic fire-starting incantation. An unstable burst of fireball began to coalesce in the air.

Heidi stopped her before the fireball could explode. "Never mind—let me do it."

Once the campfire was lit with a rather more normal magical flame, the chill that had accumulated in the underground tunnels and the pre-dawn wind was finally driven bit by bit from their bodies. Heidi let out a breath of relief and looked at Rebecca with some exasperation. "When are you ever going to learn a spell other than Fireball..."

Rebecca lowered her head in shame. "I'm sorry, Aunt."

"Don't look so hopeless so easily—even when you apologize, don't bow your head like that," Heidi said, rubbing her forehead in still greater exasperation. "You're the one who has inherited the title now, do you understand? Your performance today... frankly, that ancestor of ours was probably very disappointed, even if he didn't show it."

Rebecca tensed at once. "Then... then what should we do?"

Heidi paused, then sighed. "Alas, what can we do? Look at the state the family is in now—I doubt there is a single child of the Cecil line who could satisfy our ancestor. What we are now... is far too unworthy of the family's former glory."

Rebecca pressed her lips firmly together. For her, who had grown up step by step along the ordinary path of a noble's child, the string of events she had recently lived through had one and all gone far beyond anything she knew. No teacher had ever told her how to face such things—not the onslaught of the magic tide and its monsters, nor the fact that an ancestor had climbed out of his coffin. All of it left this young viscountess utterly at a loss.

After a moment of silence, Rebecca finally summoned her courage. "Aunt... do you think our ancestor really has come back to life?"

Heidi looked into Rebecca's eyes; she could easily guess what was on her niece's mind.

"Is it the ancestor you doubt, or the ancestor's resurrection?"

"I know I shouldn't doubt it, but this... it really is a little hard to believe."

"So it is for me, but the facts are before us," Heidi said with a shake of her head. "Do you remember the first lesson every apprentice of magic must learn? Not some theory or magical formula, but a maxim: truth may run counter to common sense, but truth is always truth. That holds outside the field of magic as well."

Seeing Rebecca sink into thought, Heidi added in a low voice: "Whatever the reason our ancestor has risen from his long sleep, the resurrection of the Cecil family's ancestor must be a fact..."

Betty glanced at her two mistresses, found she could not follow a word of their conversation, and so lowered her head and went back to hugging her beloved frying pan and staring into space.

Before long, Gao Yang returned from the hunt with three soldiers and one Amber.

The catch was not abundant, but it was satisfactory enough: three rabbits and two large birds with gorgeous plumage whose names no one knew, plus a heap of assorted wild fruits gathered along the way. Filling their stomachs should be no problem.

Watching Amber nimbly and expertly dress the carcasses, Gao Yang curled his lip. "You said you couldn't hunt. Your skill is so polished you're practically a gray elf of the Mosswood."

The Mosswood was a vast forest along the border between the Kingdom of Ansou and the Augrey tribal lands to the west. The gray elves who dwelt there, a subspecies of elf, were considered the finest hunters in the world; in woodcraft alone, in the pursuit of game through dense forest, they surpassed even the forest elves. Having realized that he urgently needed to cram on the common knowledge of this world, Gao Yang had taken to leafing through the memory vault in his head whenever he had a spare moment. This particular bit of knowledge was a recent find, and he was putting it to lively use here.

He tried hard to look like a native son born and bred.jpg.

Amber, busy cleaning the innards of the gorgeous bird, answered without even raising her head. "As expected of a great hero from seven hundred years ago—that little anecdote about gray elves must be several hundred years old, at least. Do you know that gray elves are into the medicinal herb import-export business now, and don't hunt anymore?"

Gao Yang: "..."