Chapter 5: Departure

Chapter 5:
Departure

 

THE NEXT DAY, Filia and I were thinking of heading for the guild to ask around about her home forest, but I needed to go somewhere else first. I wanted to see the receptionist at the headquarters of Mussen Morgeth’s knight order. Sure, I’d been in a panic after Filia was kidnapped, but that didn’t make up for my behavior. I just had to go there and express how sorry I was with a proper apology, complete with a gift.

“Sorry, Filia. For having you come along with me for this.” I’d explained the whole situation to Filia and asked her to come with me. As long as this Misery Mosery guy (or whatever he was called) was out causing trouble, it was a bad idea to leave her alone.

“If I hadn’t been kidnapped, that never would have happened,” said Filia. “I’m part of this as much as you are.” She looked more adult than usual. Was she dressed so nicely today because we were going to apologize?

Filia wore a black dress that contrasted with her pale skin, a dress she’d bought earlier for formal situations. She had this air of almost aristocratic elegance. Oh, and I was wearing a suit. Man, was it tight around the chest. Felt like my pecs were gonna bust right through.

“All right, Filia, I got the apology gift. How about we get going?”

“Um…Yuri? That’s a dumbbell,” said Filia.

“Oh, I’m aware, but thank you.”

“What I’m saying is that, err, I think that’s kind of inappropriate as an apology gift?”

Inappropriate? But it was such a great way to train your muscles. After much discussion, though, I decided to go with one out of the several other items Filia suggested.

We arrived at the station with the apology gift, but the woman standing at the reception desk was different from the one I’d met before. I explained to her my intent, and she led me into a break room, where we found the receptionist from the other day.

“I’m really very sorry,” I said, and I bowed toward her. Filia bowed too, just after me. I felt sorry that Filia even had to. It wasn’t her fault! I’d caused so much trouble for so many people.

“Please, it’s all right.” The receptionist smiled. I raised my head back up. “The situation was dire, so it wasn’t difficult to understand why you acted like that. Really, I’m just glad she’s safe.”

She just forgave me after all my ranting and raving? What a tolerant person.

Filia nodded. “Thank you so very much. Hey, Yuri! You need to thank her properly, too!”

“Um. Th-thank you, err, ever-so-uh, much.” I wasn’t used to speaking so formally.

Back at the inn, Filia rolled her eyes and smiled at me. “You really can’t speak formally, huh, Yuri? That is so perfectly predictable that it circles the globe and goes right back to being unbelievable.”

“But I hate dealing with that level of formality, ya know? If I had the time to learn all of that stuff, I’d rather use it for training instead.”

“Yes, yes, muscle, muscle,” said Filia with a wink. “But you know, there may be more times in the future where you’re going to need formality. Like if you need to go around and get information by talking to people.”

I see. She certainly had a point there. Probably Filia was a big part of why I’d gotten by thus far without incident. She kind of acted like a social buffer.

“My dear Yuri, you should be more grateful to me,” said Filia, letting out a little laugh and puffing out her chest proudly. Seemed like she had read my mind again.

“Thank you, Filia.” I replied, and I meant it. Without her, I could’ve gone on living like I always had. But with her, I’d been able to find a new, exciting life, so different from the one I had before. In that sense, I was always gonna be grateful to her.

“But, um…please don’t look straight at me like that. Rather embarrassing,” Filia said, looking away, “so please quit it.” Her cheeks were turning red.

Wait, she was telling me to be grateful, but now she got all embarrassed when I actually thanked her? What was that supposed to mean?

“Anyway, I’ll teach you how to speak formally, so please do not worry.”

“All right, thanks. Looking forward to it!”

Starting that day, I made time in the evenings to study with Filia. It wasn’t that I especially hated studying or anything. If a thing had clear use value, I thought it important to buckle down and learn. But for some reason, I found this way more fun than when I’d studied before. In the end, I couldn’t figure the reason why.

 

***

 

“Ready?”

“Ready!”

We stood in front of Mussen Morgeth’s gates in the morning, birdsong filling the air. In the days following our apology at the headquarters of the knight order, we’d gathered information to try to find the forest where Filia had lived. According to that intel, there were three forests that could contain an elf village.

One of those forests was well-traveled by all kinds of people, so that one was out. The remaining two were called Boon Forest and Hihi Forest, respectively. However, since Hihi Forest was only accessible to adventurers of Rank A or higher, we decided to set our sights on Boon Forest first.

“It’s been a long time since we traveled,” said Filia, looking up at me.

“Yeah. It’ll probably be past noon by the time we reach Boon Forest. I haven’t been moving my body much at all lately, I’m itching to go.”

“Um…Yuri, when you accepted that C-Rank request a couple days ago, you started running around the city at full speed and got reported, didn’t you?”

“Moving, shmoving. That wasn’t moving at all.” I wasn’t even running at full speed. If I really gave it my all, passersby would’ve been blown away by sheer air pressure. That had been jogging at best.

“Is it okay if I leave any monsters we encounter along the way to you, Yuri? I want to sort out my feelings before I reunite with everyone.”

From what we’d heard back in the guild, there weren’t any particularly strong monsters in Boon Forest. In fact, few monsters lived there at all, and since none of them were profitable bounties, adventurers didn’t care to explore the place either. In other words, the monsters would be small fry—no trouble. Also, having heard Filia’s story, I worried going back to the village might be a little traumatic for her, so I readily accepted this suggestion, and with that, the two of us set off for Boon.

It didn’t take long—we arrived at the forest without incident just past noon. I studied a tree growing on the outermost edge of the forest from the other side of a meadow. It looked to be about thirty feet tall. Light brown in color. Welp, just a normal tree…or was it?

“How ’bout it, Filia? This look like the same kinda tree from the place you lived?”

Filia shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. The trees from where I lived looked…well, they felt ‘lively’ I suppose.”

“Huh? Whaddya mean, lively?” I peered at her. “You feeling okay? No fever?”

“Lively” just wasn’t an adjective I’d use to describe a tree.

“Anyway, this isn’t a tree from my home.” She sniffed. “And I’m just fine, thank you very much.”

“If you say so. We don’t really know much ’bout what the forest is like inside, though, so let’s keep moving.”

Filia agreed, and we marched on into the trees. Normally, you should be way careful about poisons and stuff when going into the forest—toxic bugs and plants and the like—but Filia and I weren’t normal, so we proceeded with our search pretty easily. I’ve developed antibodies for almost all poisons thanks to my daily regimen. Filia had some too, plus recovery magic. Between all that, we were ready to search almost without slowing our pace at all.

Monsters did periodically attack us, but none of them were that formidable. Just more busywork. Around when the sun started to set and dusk wasn’t far, we encountered some kind of wild boar-looking monster that rushed us, like some kind of last-ditch effort from the forest monsters as a whole. It wasn’t too big of a threat after I socked a hole clean through it with my Pistol Punch.

That was probably the end of it. I made sure there weren’t any other signs of life around, then called over to Filia. “Think it’s about time we get ready to get some sleep, eh?”

“Sounds good.”

Well, we hadn’t imagined we’d finish exploring an entire forest in just one day, so we weren’t too bothered about needing to find a place to sleep. I bent over and slammed my fist against the deciduous soil we’d been walking on. “Hooah!”

That smack was pretty loud, enough to startle Filia, but I was whacking the ground for Filia. Loud thumping—WHAM! WHAM!—resounded through the forest for a while, until finally, I finished.

“There we go.”

Ground that had been flat was now a gigantic hole, big enough for a person to climb right in. The surface inside the hole was smooth, almost like it’d been sanded down and varnished. If I’d gone too hard, it could’ve ended up smooth as mirror glass.

This was Filia’s bed. After all, Filia couldn’t sleep while standing like me. It wasn’t like we had any other options either. I’d made holes like this before too, back when we were escaping the forest I’d grown up in, but this time I made it extra, extra smooth so my nervous comrade might finally relax a little—just as any gentle muscle man would do.

“Thank you very much, Yuri.” With that, Filia lay down in the hole. Lightly rolled around. Rolled and rolled and rolled…

“How is it? Comfy?”

“You made it for me. I don’t have any complaints.”

“’Kay.”

But seeing Filia lie down, it was kinda like… It, uh, kinda looked like a coffin or something, with a dead body inside of it?

Not that it mattered or anything what it looked like, and I definitely didn’t care about that.

“Oh, I do have one complaint,” said Filia.

“What’s that?”

“I can’t get out.” Filia was trying, too, wriggling her limbs to pull herself up like a newborn fawn or something. Oops. I’d gone for smooth and completely hit the target: It was downright slippery.

“Sorry. I’ll fix it.”

“But…but you’re not laughing at me, are you…?”

“Nah.”

“ReallyyyOOFHP!” Filia fell back down with a thunk.

“I’m not laughing. I’m really sorry. It’s like, I can’t even bear to watch it. It’s an awful sight.”

“An awful—all right, Yuri, I don’t know about that wording.”

I felt pretty sorry for her like this, so I made the inside of the hole a little more rugged to give her an easier time climbing out. It had been hard work making it so smooth, but sometimes you just gotta make a hole in a forest less comfortable to help your tiny friend climb out when she’s gotta.

With an enthusiastic, “Thank you!” Filia lay back down to go to sleep, and all without a single slip or slide.

“Ffff…pshew!” Yep, that was the sleeping Filia sound. “Ffff…pshew!”

For myself, I kept a wary eye on our surroundings till morning.

 

***

 

At dawn, we got ready to keep moving and resume our search. Based on the estimated size of the area, we could probably get a good sense of it within a couple days.

“Are you really sure you don’t need to sleep?” asked Filia. Even though I’d told her I was fine, she was a real worrier.

“Nah, I don’t really have any problems going without sleep for a day or so. Fifteen days, though, now that I don’t know about.”

“I see. Well, I’m always glad to hear new ways you’ve stopped being human,” said Filia.

Filia wasn’t shocked by my body’s performance, huh? Maybe she was getting used to it. I guess that could be a good thing sometimes? Anyway, nothing happened on the second day of our search. We encountered only two monsters, and I just kept hoping we would find something on the third. I wanted to restore Filia’s abilities as soon as possible.

But in the end, we were almost done and I didn’t think it likely we’d find anything in Boon.

“Ah, man,” I groaned. “We didn’t even pick up any clues.”

“Huh. Look at you, Yuri, getting all dejected—how unlike you. Think of it this way: Now it’s almost guaranteed that Hihi Forest is the right one, isn’t it? Look at it that way, and you can see we’ve made a ton of progress!” Filia gave an enthusiastic fist pump, and her smile was just so big and kind-hearted.

A positive outlook, huh? Yeah, she certainly had a point there. But what was up with her arms? I mean, little as they were, they were so jiggly! Even without me flexing, my muscles always announced themselves, yeah? She hadn’t done enough training.

Yeah, that’s what we needed—I had to show this here forest some muscles! I released those sweet muscles of mine and struck a passionate pose, showing off my bulging chest to the forest.

Filia blinked. “Why are you making that pose?”

“I’m showing the forest my muscles,” I said, muscularly.

“I-I see…?” replied Filia, which didn’t sound especially convinced.

“Anywho, Filia, we gotta get stronger!”

“We have to be at least Rank A for that other forest, right?” Filia’s shoulders slumped, deflated. “I hate training. It’s always so hard…”

“Okay. No monsters around. How about we run all the way back to town?”

“Did you just say ‘run all the way’?!”

No more talk! I took off, dragging her along with me. We rushed back to the city—mostly. After running about 80 percent of the way, Filia started wheezing, so we went back to walking. Jeez, we only ran for a measly two hours! Filia really had to work on her stamina.

“Doesn’t the city seem louder, somehow?” asked Filia as Mussen Morgeth came into view. Filia had great hearing, on par with mine. I listened carefully, and indeed, I heard a strange sound.

“Whoa. Sounds like there’s a pretty big battle going on up there. Let’s hurry, yeah?”

“Mmhm! Understood!”

We rushed back to the city, and to the gruesome sights that waited us there.