Interlude: The Girl’s Adventure

Interlude:
The Girl’s Adventure

 

I WALKED THROUGH the woods alone.

The forest near the village crawled with monsters. I often ventured a short way into the trees to gather mushrooms or medicinal herbs, but I’d never gone this deep before on my own. Marielle would be furious if she knew. No matter—I had no choice but to go.

I probably should have brought backup, but Doz was missing and poor Grantz had just been killed. Rumors about a dragon sighting were circulating—a big one, seen flying deep into the forest. It looked injured, but no one wanted to risk an encounter.

I knew it was dangerous, so I didn’t pester them. Besides, if I asked around too much, word would get back to Marielle and she’d put a stop to my adventure before it began.

So, alone it was.

A long time ago, it was forbidden to venture deep into the forest. People thought it would anger the gods who protected the village, but by the time I was born that was considered more of a superstition by most people, though some of the elders still believed it. Marielle was one of the believers, so she didn’t look kindly on forest explorers. She was old enough that she took the village’s customs very seriously, despite how little and cute she was. Ha, she’d make such a grumpy face if she heard me say that.

I kept my ears open, listening closely to my surroundings as I made my careful way through the forest. It would be okay. After all, I could use magic. I could fight off weak monsters by myself.

From behind me came a rustling in the brush. I whipped around to find an enormous caterpillar—a darkwyrm. It was almost as large as I was, and its black squirming body wriggled across the ground towards me.

I was startled, but at the same time I felt relieved. Even I could beat a darkwyrm.

“Fireball!”

Flames shot from my staff, blazing toward the darkwyrm. It turned tail and ran.

“Phew…”

I let out a sigh of relief as it disappeared from view. Marielle said darkwyrms were F Rank monsters and therefore weren’t very dangerous; even regular people could deal with them. I was more than capable of defeating a monster like that.

The most I could do to an E Rank monster was incapacitate it. Doz could take one on his own, though. But the danger level really jumped with D Rank monsters. Everything below that had about as much power as the average adventurer. But D Rank and higher were as strong as at least three humans.

Four skilled adventurers could defeat a C Rank monster, but only if they planned very carefully beforehand. Our village sometimes had to go to the bigger city and ask for help defeating tougher monsters.

If I came across anything higher than a D Rank, I had to take care not to provoke it and run away. If it chased me, my only recourse was to use fire magic and hope that scared it off. But even coming across one was putting my life in danger, and in the forest the odds weren’t exactly low.

So why come to the forest in the first place?

Because when Bälz returned from a fishing trip, he said he’d seen Doz. Doz, who was still missing. Bälz was out by the lake, which was right between the town and the forest, when he felt someone watching him from the woods. He looked up and saw Doz looking out at him from among the trees.

Doz was acting strangely, mumbling to himself. Bälz called out to him and Doz smiled, but then he ran off into the trees like he’d seen something scary. One of his legs dragged behind him. His clothes were in tatters, his face gaunt. The edges of his mouth were tinged blue. He looked very unwell.

Unsurprising, considering how dangerous the forest was for a lone adventurer. And it was very strange to hear that he’d reached the edge of the forest only to turn back.

The rest of the village dismissed Bälz’s story as the ramblings of a drunk. They said he probably had one too many while he was out fishing. Bälz did like his liquor. Other than that, all his story accomplished so far was adding to the rumors that there were ghosts in the forest. It was easy to explain his story away as a tipsy fisherman who probably just saw a ghost.

Bälz swore he had nothing to drink that day, but no one believed him. A few people even said they’d seen him going into the forest with a bottle. One person said, “He’s probably just too embarrassed to admit it was because of his bad habits.”

Under normal circumstances, if Doz was known to be alive and wandering the forest, all the young men in the village would form a search party. The people chosen for the search would know they were risking their lives, but our village’s motto was “no one left behind.” Abandoning someone like this was expressly forbidden.

I’d heard people talk about past search parties many times, the stories repeated like old heroic tales. But now, because of all the rumors floating around, everyone was too afraid to venture into the forest. Doz wasn’t popular to begin with either, hence why no one had come forward to suggest forming a search party.

The eyewitness who claimed he’d seen Doz acting strangely, added to the sightings of the giant dragon, meant that no one really knew what was going on in the forest, or what unknown risks they’d be facing. That was the excuse. But I think deep down it left a bitter taste in the villager’s mouths to dismiss the whole ordeal.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure I believed the people who said they’d seen Bälz leave with alcohol anyway.

I thought he might be telling the truth.

I wasn’t sure what had happened to Doz, but Bälz might be right. So that was why I’d decided to go deep into the forest, because if I had just been able to stop Doz that day, none of this would have happened. If I had talked to Marielle, or tried to convince Grantz not to go, I could’ve prevented the reckless provocation of the Rock Dragon. I was the only one who had a chance to stop it.

I wanted to believe that Doz wasn’t that deep in the forest. He’d been seen close to the village after all, if only briefly. I’d go just a short way in. There weren’t any monsters around here too strong for me to handle. Or at least…there shouldn’t be.