Zakunya's local specialty dish was a hot pot made with river fish.
Even back when he lived in Japan, Rei would head into the river every summer to catch ayu, yamame, iwana, and kajika, so he had no particular aversion to river fish. Besides, Gilm was far from the sea, so whenever anyone spoke of fish there, they meant river fish.
Because of that, Rei had felt a twinge of disappointment when he first heard the dish used river fish. But what was actually served was vastly different from anything he had expected.
Startled by a richness of flavor that made it hard to believe the fish came from a river, Rei had asked for details and learned they used a variety that could only be caught in this immediate vicinity. He was shown the fish before it was cooked, and it was a type he had never seen before, even in Gilm, a frontier town that drew merchants from far and wide.
If anything, its appearance resembled an elongated fish like a Pacific saury. Of course, it differed from the saury Rei knew in plenty of ways, so it probably wasn't actually saury. And indeed, its taste was vastly different.
The hot pot, packed with that fish and an abundance of seasonal early-summer vegetables, thoroughly satisfied Rei despite the summer heat. The villagers eating alongside him were sweating from having hot pot in summer, but Rei had the Dragon Robe, so there was no need to worry about such things.
(I'd like to have rice porridge to finish things off, if possible... but there's no rice.)
For a former Japanese person, it wouldn't be strange to have a strong attachment to white rice. Rei, however, had never been particularly fixated on it. His attitude was simple: if there was no white rice, he'd just eat bread. But even for someone like him, rice porridge after a hot pot was by no means something he disliked.
No, rather, when he ate hot pot at home back in Japan, he would often set aside ingredients specifically for the porridge, using the leftovers the next day. However, as far as Rei knew, he had never seen rice anywhere in the Kingdom of Mireana. It was true that he had visited various places as an adventurer, but the places he hadn't been to still overwhelmingly outnumbered those he had. It was entirely possible that rice was a staple food in some of those regions.
(Well, rice might not be called rice over there, though.)
As he mulled this over, Rei was listening to Schiller and Regula share stories from their childhoods as post-meal conversation, when Jazz suddenly spoke up.
"Lord Rei, thank you truly for rescuing Schiller this time."
"You don't need to be so formal. Like I said earlier, it just happened."
"Even so, if you hadn't been there, Lord Rei, my daughter would have... Her mother asked me to watch over her, and I have no face to show her now."
At those words, Rei belatedly noticed that Jazz's wife, Schiller's mother, was nowhere to be seen. But he didn't ask where she was. After all, Rei's main purpose for stopping by had been to enjoy the local specialty dish. Having accomplished that, he had no desire to pry into things that didn't concern him. He could easily guess that she was probably already dead.
However, Rei's disinterest lasted only until he overheard the words of a man standing near Jazz.
"Calm down. This isn't Count Relduct's territory anymore."
"...What?"
The man's words contained a name that, given the request Rei was currently undertaking, he absolutely could not afford to miss.
"Count Relduct?"
The man who had spoken to Jazz clearly hadn't expected Rei to react. Feeling a flash of surprise—no, something closer to mild intimidation—as Rei fixed him with a steady stare, he opened his mouth.
"Y-yeah. Jazz and his family originally lived in Count Relduct's territory. But things got complicated, and they fled all the way here."
"Huh. That's interesting. Mind if I ask for specifics?"
"...Why would you be so interested in my story, Lord Rei?" Jazz asked, his suspicion apparent.
Count Relduct did hold somewhat significant authority among the nobility, but in the end, it was only to a modest degree. Moreover, why would Rei, who was known to be part of the Neutral Faction, have any interest in Count Relduct of the Noble's Faction?
Faced with that questioning gaze, Rei hesitated over how to answer. He obviously couldn't come right out and say he was going to retaliate against them for interfering with Gilm's expansion. In the end, he cleared his throat softly, as if to brush the question aside.
"As you can probably tell from the fact that I'm out here when I'm based in Gilm, I currently have some business in Count Relduct's territory for a small request. So when I happened to hear the name of the very place I'm heading to, it caught my interest. You can never have too much information."
"...I see." Jazz nodded, though he didn't fully buy Rei's explanation. The words were neither a complete lie nor the whole truth. Jazz sensed this, likely thanks to his instincts as a former adventurer, rusty though they may have been.
Being a former C-Rank adventurer meant one was legitimately skilled. Setting aside exceptional places like Gilm, in an ordinary village or town, it was a rank high enough that being regarded as a top-class adventurer wouldn't raise any eyebrows. Because of that, Jazz noticed there was something lurking beneath Rei's words—but he had no intention of pressing the matter. Instead, he pretended not to notice and continued.
"Count Relduct's territory has quite severe tax rates. It's to the point where just staying alive is a struggle. That's exactly why I left."
"Well, that figures." No one would willingly choose a life where merely surviving was a struggle. But even so, people who uprooted themselves and relocated were not that common. Many spent their entire lives in the village or town where they were born. For people like that, the very concept of leaving home simply didn't exist. If one took up a profession like a merchant or an adventurer, that common sense would be overturned, but those who chose such paths were never many.
Moreover, if the tax collection were truly so harsh that people couldn't survive, they might resort to some form of resistance. But the residents of Count Relduct's territory, while barely scraping by, were not on the verge of starvation. This was likely proof that Count Relduct was by no means incompetent. Though, it was entirely in character for him to use that talent solely to satisfy his own greed.
"...Hm? You moved here quite a long time ago, right? Schiller said she was born here."
Given that Schiller was around twenty years old, Jazz must have come to Zakunya before she was born. If so, the Count Relduct that Jazz knew couldn't be the same person Rei was targeting. According to the information Rei had received from Daskar, the current Count Relduct was said to be in his thirties.
(Thinking about it normally, the Count Relduct targeted for retaliation this time is probably the son, or something along those lines, of the one Jazz knew.) Of course, it could also be a much younger brother, a relative, or an adopted child—there were various possibilities. But that didn't really matter to Rei. (No, the Noble's Faction is supposedly proud of their bloodline, so while a brother or relative is possible, an adopted child is unlikely.) After all, there was no way the man had been running a territory since he was ten years old.
Jazz nodded, confirming Rei's assumption. "Yeah, that seems to be the case. But according to rumors brought in by merchants, bards, and adventurers, only the lord changed. The territory's policies stayed the same."
The lord had changed, but the policies hadn't. When Jazz first heard that, he had felt a flicker of irritation. But when he considered that it was simply the result of the previous lord's upbringing, he found himself accepting it with strange resignation.
"So, could you let me know if you have any information about Count Relduct's territory?" Rei had never expected to obtain intelligence about his very destination in a village he'd stumbled into by chance.
"What I know directly is information from over twenty years ago. I doubt it would be of much use to you, Lord Rei."
"That's not true. Information may be old or new, but no information is ever completely useless."
As someone who had once lived in Japan, Rei understood the importance of information as a matter of course. Whatever the endeavor, having information versus not having it made a world of difference.
"Understood. Though there's nothing that particularly sets it apart from any other noble's territory, other than the harsh tax rates. The other thing I know is that the Count Relduct family has a skilled Knight Order. They were quite capable, but they used to do whatever they pleased because of it."
"Ah... I see." Rei nodded in understanding.
Given the heavy taxation, there were bound to be those who held a grudge against the lord. It was only natural to maintain an appropriate fighting force to deal with such people. And given that they served Count Relduct, if one were to ask whether that Knight Order conducted themselves in a manner befitting the title of knights... the answer, thinking about it normally, would be no.
"A Knight Order in name only, but essentially a private army?"
"Yeah. In exchange, it seems many of them are quite confident in their abilities."
Hearing that, what came to mind for Rei was the band of private soldiers who had instigated this whole affair. (But the ones I captured did show a fair amount of loyalty to their employer, for what it's worth... Well, they were being sent to Gilm, so of course they'd factor that in.)
They had probably selected men who could keep their mouths shut, but even so, they surely never imagined that everyone would be captured so effortlessly. Even excluding Rei himself, Gilm had plenty of skilled adventurers. Their failure to account for such circumstances was likely due to them looking down on the Neutral Faction as a minor power.
(If they'd properly investigated Gilm, I doubt they'd have done something so foolish.)
The Neutral Faction was by no means as large as the King's Faction, the largest of the factions, or the Noble's Faction that followed it. Even so, it was undeniably still referred to as one of the three major factions.
"Well, whatever kind of opponents are waiting there, I just need to carry out my request."
"I see. Well, if you say so, Lord Rei, then that's fine. ...Ah, right. If there's anything you want to know over there, try visiting a man named Dostri in a city called Hazlui. He should be able to help you."
"...Dostri? May I ask who that is?"
"My younger brother."
A bitter look crossed Jazz's face as he said it. He likely felt guilty about living a peaceful life here while his brother remained behind. Though, considering that his only daughter had just been carried off by Orcs, it was debatable whether one could really call his life peaceful.
"I see." That was all Rei said in reply. He knew that whatever words he offered wouldn't even serve as a comfort.
"...I'm sorry. Things got a bit gloomy. Now, on another note—within Count Relduct's territory, the place you need to be most careful of is a city called Jawa, where the count himself resides."
"Well, it is his seat of power."
"That's right. Because of that, there's a large presence of soldiers and knights. If anything happens, they'll seize you immediately... though I suppose there's no need for you to worry about that, Lord Rei."
To capture Rei, they would need far more than one, two, ten, twenty, or even a hundred or two hundred men. Of course, if there were individuals with exceptional skills, that would be a different story entirely—but Count Relduct, who was hardly a standout figure even within the Noble's Faction, couldn't possibly possess that kind of military strength.
"I'll be careful. I have no intention of recklessly causing a massive scene, either."
In reality, he was going there specifically to cause that scene, but he said so for now. If something went wrong and, by some one-in-a-million chance, the people of this village learned Rei's true purpose, it would be highly inconvenient.
(Moreover, Jazz is here. If someone decided to look into where he came from, it wouldn't be hard to figure out.) If that happened, Rei wanted to avoid harm coming to Jazz and the villagers as much as possible. That was the intent behind his words.
"Oh, right. If you were an adventurer, you can write, can't you? I wouldn't mind delivering a letter to your brother."
Gazing at Regula, who was busy failing in his attempts to woo Schiller, Rei mentioned it casually.