Chapter 97: The Bear Goes to Meet Cliff

Chapter 97:
The Bear Goes to Meet Cliff

 

AFTER BATHING, relaxing after the (mental) exhaustion of burrowing through a mountain range, and going to bed a little early, I woke up to the faint rays of sunshine. I wasn’t tired in the slightest. After a light breakfast, I resummoned Kumakyu, who I’d sent away earlier, and left for Crimonia. I had Kumakyu rush it, so it didn’t take us long at all. I greeted the gate guards, headed into town, and sent my bear home to chill.

 

Before I let Fina and Tiermina know that I was back, I went to get that favor out of the way. I got to the lord’s estate, told a gatekeeper I knew that I came to meet with Cliff, and before you could say “ugh, this guy again,” I was led to a room right away to meet him.

Not very busy for a lord, was he?

“Not often that you’re here for me instead of Noa,” said Cliff.

“Well, someone asked me for a favor.”

“A favor?”

I handed Cliff the letter from Mileela. Cliff took it and looked it over on the spot. When he finished reading the letter, he sighed.

“I swear, you—” He rubbed his temples. “Really, Yuna? Going after a kraken alone?”

“Does it say that I soloed it in there?” And hadn’t Atola sworn everyone to secrecy?

“It says a single adventurer defeated it, and…Yuna? I happen to know you.” He sighed.

Okay, fair enough, considering he knew I defeated ten thousand monsters and a black viper. But couldn’t old man Kuro have made it a little less obvious? Weaved a bit of a tale?

“It’s not like I slayed the thing for fun. The kraken just so happened to be right in my path.” I put my hands on my hips and sniffed. “It was getting in my way.”

(My way to some nutritious and oh-so-delicious rice, that was. The kraken was unlucky enough to be standing in the way, or…swimming in the way, maybe.)

“It was in your way? You really need to listen to yourself sometime. You sound like a villainous overlord trying to take over the world, or something.”

“World domination would be a total pain.”

Cliff blinked. “Wait, you’re not saying…you couldn’t do it, then.”

“I mean?” I shrugged. “I guess I’m not?”

But it wasn’t like I was going to, you know? What was so fun about world domination? Sure, you could take over the world…or you could nap and snack and be a person for a while. I read all the light novels about getting reincarnated in another world—usually after some big car or whatever whacked ’em dead and some fantasy stuff happened—and becoming a hero or a demon king or some crazy half-naked barbarian. You know what that was, though? Work. This bear would rather hibernate, thank you very much.

“Well,” said Cliff, clearing his throat, “I suppose the contents of the letter are more important than you, at present.”

“What was in the letter?” I more or less knew what they put in it, but I didn’t know the nitty-gritty details.

“In short, they’ve detailed the events of the past month and have said they are willing to pay taxes in order to join Crimonia’s territory. There are, ah, a lot of tells about what you’ve been up to,” he added with a distant look in his eyes.

“Tells?”

“It tells of a single adventurer saving them by donating food. It tells of a single adventurer joining with four other adventurers to defeat bandits and rescue hostages. Oh, and another unnamed single adventurer defeated the kraken, which saved them from their food shortage. Don’t worry, no names, just…a single adventurer.”

I guess people who didn’t know me wouldn’t make assumptions from that letter. Then again, Atola and old man Kuro didn’t really know how well Cliff knew me, so I guess this was just inevitable.

“Ah, putting aside the parts about you being an impossibly powerful teenage girl, the problem at hand is how we’ll progress with these negotiations. I’ll probably need to meet with them, but they don’t have a mayor. Just three elders representing the seaport, with the master of the adventurers’ guild assisting them. Summoning older folks all the way here seems rather cruel.”

“You’re not busy though, right? Why don’t you just go out to Mileela?”

“Not bu—listen you, I’m still a lord! I have plenty of work! I can’t just leave the town unattended for multiple days.”

“If you just want to get to Mileela, it’ll only take a day.”

Cliff gave me an odd look. “Oh dear. Are you—are you feeling all right? You’ve traveled a while, and I know that hard journeys can take their toll, so if you need a doctor—”

“If you’re saying I’m delirious, I’m not!”

“You say that, but surely you know that there’s no way getting to Mileela in so little time. The mountains? Surely you recall the mountains. Unless you suggest that we fly, of course.” Cliff gave his arms a little flap to demonstrate. Man, really?

“I can’t fly,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth, “but I did make a tunnel.”

“Wait,” said Cliff mid-flap, a perfectly dumbfounded look crossing his face. Now that was a sight. No way Noa would be able to take him seriously if she saw that one. “My apologies. Could you repeat that again? I think I misheard you.”

“I dug a tunnel, and now we can get there on Kumayuru in a single day.”

Cliff clutched his head. “You’re not…lying are you? I suppose this is, ah…I suppose this isn’t impossible? Not with you. A tunnel. In the mountains. Within a couple of…just a couple…of days.”

Just one, actually, but I bit my tongue.

“A tunnel?” said Cliff. “A tunnel, though?”

“A tunnel. I wanted to make a seafood distribution channel.” And I wanted Anz to come to Crimonia, but he didn’t need to hear that part.

“A tunnel,” sighed Cliff with the finality of a funeral. “I’ve always thought your very existence was absurd, but every conversation we have makes it worse.”

“Yep, cool, great. Anyway, we can hop on Kumayuru and get there in a single day. The other option’s to get the old guys to come here, but they’d probably need to go by carriage and it’d take a while.”

“Yes, yes. Considering the situation, I’ll go to them.”

That was quick. Better than him hemming and hawing and dragging his feet, though.

“I need to assess this tunnel you made anyway,” he added. I didn’t really like the way he said assess, like he was a teacher grading me on a test or something.

“When do you want to head out?” I asked.

“I have some pressing work I need to finish tomorrow. I also need to get in touch with the trade guild. I suppose we’ll leave the day after tomorrow.”

“The trade guild?”

“According to the letter, the guild master of their trade guild committed some crimes. I’ve got to run that by ours, haven’t I? If possible, I would like to take the guild master, too. How many people can your bears seat?”

“Two would be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep. But I won’t let the guild master ride if they frighten my bears.”

“I don’t think she’d scare them,” said Cliff. “If she does, we can go on without her.”

Pretty accommodating of Cliff. I could live with that, I guess?

“I’ll go to your house the day after tomorrow,” he said, “so please wait for me there.”

I promised Cliff I would and, with that, headed out into the hallway…and Noa rushed up to me.

“Yuna! Please let me know when you’re coming, okay?”

“I was here for Cliff today.”

“Are you done with that?”

“For today, sure.”

“Then that means you have time.”

She had such a sweet smile, but the person behind Noa also smiled…a sinister smile, dripping with doom.

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? You realize Lala’s been just smiling at us for a while now, yeah?”

Noa turned around and went pale at the sight of Lala’s smile, and its hidden dagger.

“Lady Noir,” said Lala, “you are still in the middle of your studies.”

“I’m tired, though. I would like a break. I need my dose of bear.”

Dose of bear? What, was bear a required nutrient now? Just imagine something like that getting discovered on earth and announced. The Nobel Prize ceremony would be grizzly stuff, I bet.

Noa whined and whined, and at last Lala let out a small, defeated sigh. “All right. But only for a bit. Ms. Yuna, may I ask that you accompany Lady Noir for a short time?”

“Sure thing.”

“Well then, if you could. I will make preparations for tea.” With a brief dip of her head, Lala left us.

“Okay, Yuna, let’s go to my room.” Noa pulled on my bear puppet glove. “You gotta tell me, where were you?”

“You know that ocean you get to once you cross over the Elezent mountain range?”

“The—no way, you got over that mountain?”

“Well, I’ve got my bears.”

“That’s so amazing! The ocean…that’s nice. I’d like to go too.”

“Why don’t we, when it warms up?”

“I’d like to, but my father doesn’t allow distant excursions.”

“Oh it’s okay. I’m bringing it closer, in a way.”

“Hm?” Noa gave her head a little tilt.

I couldn’t tell her about the tunnel just yet, so I kept things ambiguous, “I’ll make him realize it’s closer than he thinks.”

“Will you really? Then it’s a promise. And um, Yuna? Can I have a favor?” She looked at me with upturned eyes and pinchable, blushing cheeks. Ugh, even I wasn’t immune to this level of cuteness. Too much power. “Can I borrow your bears?”

Exactly what I expected. I mean, she just talked about getting a dose of bear in earlier. Since the opportunity presented itself, I decided this was a great time to show her the bears in their newly compact cub forms.

Whoosh.

“Wh-Wh-What is this?! What are these bears?!”

“They’re Kumayuru and Kumakyu. They should fit in your room at this size, right?”

Noa slowly approached the bears. I wondered why—she must’ve known by now that they weren’t going to run away or whatever. Then, with a determined huff, she gave them both gigantic bear hugs. “Yunaaaaaa?”

“Yessssssss?”

“Can I have them?”

“You gotta know that’s a no.” Predictably, Noa got in trouble with Lala when she refused to let go of the bears ten, twenty, thirty minutes after her break was supposed to be over.

 

The next day, I headed to the orphanage to check in with Fina and Tiermina. Orphans surrounded the place, energetic and playful as ever—these were the little kids of the bunch. The youngest were just starting to walk and the older ones were five-ish. Since the little kids couldn’t take care of the birds or do manual labor, they got to have fun playing outside.

The kids swarmed me when they saw me.

“Bear girl!”

“In the flesh. Or fur. Or whatever. Are you all getting along?” I looked them over. One of the kids stood a step behind everyone else, watching me. A new kid, then?

“Yeah!” one of the kids said.

“Mmhm! We’re all playing together!”

A look around showed that they were right—no kids being left out.

“Well, I see you’re all being good.”

“Hee hee!”

“Make sure to keep playing nice, now.”

“Uh-huh!” The kids burst into smiles at that. One of the kids grabbed the new orphan’s hand, then, and broke into a run, the others trailing close behind. The new kid smiled and melted right in with the others.

The headmistress and Liz were putting in the work, like always. The kids were all right.

From there, I headed to the small shed where Tiermina worked, right beside the henhouse, counting out the eggs that the kids collected. The kids older than six took care of the birds, collected the eggs, and cleaned the henhouses.

Sure enough, I found Tiermina there in the shed, right in the middle of counting. Fina and Shuri flanked Tiermina, eager to lend her a hand.

“Yuna!” Tiermina gave me a way.

“I’m back, g—” but before I could finish my sentence, Fina and Shuri rushed across the shed gleefully for a hug.

“Nothing exciting happened while I was out?” I asked the two of them. If something had happened, they would have contacted me on the bear phone, and the calm atmosphere told me things were uneventful, but I figured I might as well ask.

“Nope, nothing. Mom and Dad are getting along fine too.”

Good to hear. Maybe Fina and Shuri would get a new brother or sister before long.

“Fina, don’t overshare,” said Tiermina sternly. She looked a little embarrassed to hear her own daughter explain their home life to me.

I gave Fina and Shuri pats on the head and crossed the shed to their mom. “Tiermina, I made it back.”

“We’re glad to see you. How was the ocean?”

“Things got a little busy, but it was all fun in the end.” Oh, and with a pack of robbers here, giant kraken there…

“Was it, now? I’ve been there before in my adventuring days, but I do miss it sometimes.”

Hm. Maybe next time I could take Tiermina and the kids to the ocean with me. Fina and Shuri probably hadn’t even seen the ocean before.

Kids and Tiermina—check. Next objective: the headmistress.

The bear statue watched over the entrance to the newly built orphanage. I ran a hand over it and asked, from the bottom of my heart, that it keep these kids safe. Inside, I found the headmistress and Liz going about their business.

“Headmistress, here’s a souvenir,” I said, after a brief catchup. I pulled out the mammoth hoard of fresh seafood I’d gotten at the festival from my bear storage. I mean, it wasn’t like a single person could’ve eaten the amount of food they served me anyway—it was one plate after another, and I’d be stuck with leftovers forever and ever till they entombed me with seafood.

“Is this fish?” The headmistress studied it. “Goodness. Now that’s a rarity you’ve brought us. It’s a little bit early, but why don’t we gather the children for lunch?”

“I’ll call them,” said Liz, and left us.

“So, headmistress, do you know how to prep fish?”

“I’ve dressed river fish before, yes.”

Ehh, it wasn’t like they got fish often at the orphanage, so I shouldn’t have expected a master of the fried and fishy arts. I needed to get Anz to Crimonia, and fast.