"...That was unexpected, huh? I was sure we'd be stuck there for at least a few more days."
As he walked along the highway, Rei cast his gaze skyward.
Stretching overhead was a clear, quintessentially summer sky.
Yesterday, the rain had poured without letting up even once. Today's weather made that seem like a complete lie.
Surely no one could have predicted this turn of events.
"Indeed. They say summer weather is fickle, and that certainly proved true today. Of course, from our perspective, it was an unexpectedly pleasant development, so I have no cause for complaint."
Elena, walking beside Rei with Set between them, stroked Ielo as it napped in the sunlight on Set's back.
Truthfully, Rei had no complaints about how thoroughly the weather had cleared, as if yesterday's rain had never happened.
However, the highway wasn't paved with solid concrete like in Japan.
There were depressions in various places, and many spots had formed puddles from yesterday's downpour.
Furthermore, with a group of nearly a thousand people, not everyone was walking on the highway itself; some were trekking along the ground slightly off the road.
Those people had to navigate terrain with even more puddles than the highway.
Many of the women were wearing clothes made just yesterday, and far fewer remained in prostitute attire compared to the day before.
"We might not need to rely on the Zorgeh Merchant Guild for cloth and clothes after all."
"Why not take what they offer? It's not like having extra clothes and cloth will cause any trouble."
Marina, walking a short distance away, responded to Rei's murmur.
Under normal circumstances, receiving enough cloth and clothing for a thousand people would create a storage nightmare.
But Rei had his Misty Ring.
Whether for a thousand people, two thousand, or even ten thousand, cloth and clothing could be stored inside with ease.
What's more, time did not flow within the Misty Ring.
In other words, nothing inside would deteriorate with age.
Given that, there was always a chance it could prove useful someday. Marina's advice — that it was better to take what was offered — prompted Rei to glance back.
"Honestly, having this kind of thing happen over and over isn't exactly amusing."
A few dozen people would be one thing, but leading a group of nearly a thousand — most of them civilians — was a heavy burden even for Rei.
During the war with the Bestia Empire, I traveled with even more people... but back then, everyone was reasonably skilled and had the stamina for it, so it was much easier.
Their travel speed back then had been faster, too.
By comparison, he couldn't help but consider their current pace sluggish.
"Well, I doubt it'll happen dozens or hundreds of times, but there's a chance something like this could occur a few more times, don't you think?"
"That's not very encouraging."
This time, Rei had ended up leading the group more by circumstance than choice. Being told to repeat this kind of ordeal over and over and simply accepting it with a nod wasn't going to happen.
Honestly, he wanted this to be the last time.
"I'm with Rei on that. The giants were somewhat strong, but not enough to truly satisfy. If possible, I'd want to face worthier opponents."
Vihera chimed in next.
Given that this request had involved a dark organization from the small nation of Reblurina, she hadn't expected to encounter particularly powerful enemies from the start.
Even so, she must have held out some hope.
For Vihera, the battle against the giants had been the sole reward of this entire request — and even that had only barely scratched the itch, quantity barely making up for a lack of quality.
It was far from a fight that could truly satisfy her.
"Grrrooowl!"
As they continued walking and chatting, Set suddenly let out a cry.
Following his gaze, they spotted a boar sprinting across the grassland for some reason.
Of course, there was no rule saying boars couldn't run near the highway. Still, it was generally far more common for them to travel through groves or forests.
For anyone with a certain level of skill, a boar was quite literally nothing more than prey.
Its meat was far more delicious than preservation-oriented rations like dried meat or hardtack for anyone traveling on the road. Though, admittedly, there were some with catastrophically bad cooking skills.
Even so, by any reasonable standard, a boar was the ideal catch.
That held equally true for Rei and his group now.
"Go, Set."
"Gruu!"
At Rei's word, Set immediately bolted after the prey.
The boar must have noticed Set closing in behind it.
It broke into an even faster sprint.
Naturally. An ordinary wild animal — neither monster nor anything of the sort — stood no chance whatsoever against Set.
Confronted by a creature like Set, the boar must have instinctively grasped that there was no path to survival.
But the moment Set spotted it, the boar's fate was sealed.
A boar could run at roughly fifty kilometers per hour.
But given its weight, while it might sustain that speed over short distances, there was no way it could keep up that pace over a long chase.
As a result, Set caught up with ease and snapped its neck with a single foreleg strike, snuffing out its life in an instant.
The boar's body, its neck broken mid-sprint, scraped along the ground from the sheer momentum.
But even that came to a halt once Set caught up to the carcass and pinned it down with a foreleg.
"Grrrooowl!"
Set let out a pleased cry at having dispatched the boar in a single blow, but...
'Huh?'
From a grove some distance away — the same grove the boar had burst from — several men emerged, voicing their surprise as if reflexively.
Watching from the highway as he walked, Rei briefly went on guard. The bows the men carried made him wonder if they were pursuers from Jaya or Rossi. But he quickly dismissed the idea based on their clothing.
Hunters, maybe? Of course, I still can't rule out the possibility of pursuers disguised as hunters.
As a precaution — and strictly as a precaution — Rei didn't fully drop his guard against the men.
But seeing them stare dumbfounded at the boar Set was carrying — easily over a hundred kilograms — strongly suggested they were simply hunters.
"Hey, go ask those men who they are."
"Understood!"
A Resistance man immediately responded to Rei's order and set off.
Watching him go, Rei wondered whether he should have spoken to Sura first. But the Resistance man didn't seem to notice Rei's hesitation at all.
Technically, Rei was the one leading this group, but he hadn't placed the Resistance under his direct command.
Under the circumstances, the proper course would have been to issue orders to the Resistance through Sura.
Yet the Resistance man followed Rei's instructions without any sense of incongruity.
While Rei mulled this over, the Resistance man approached the men who appeared to be hunters.
During that exchange, Set returned to Rei's side, dragging the boar along.
"Gruu!"
After dropping the boar it had been carrying on the ground, Set looked up at him as if asking, "How's this?"
Rei stored the boar in his Misty Ring and gave Set a firm pat on the head.
Whether pleased by the praise, Set rubbed his face against Rei.
They kept walking throughout, of course, so he couldn't exactly give Set a thorough reward.
Even so, Set seemed satisfied enough from being praised by Rei.
Purring contentedly, he trotted along beside Rei.
The butchering of the boar Set caught would, naturally, wait until camp.
It would be handled by whoever had free hands then.
If they were raised in a village, that would be one thing. But among the women who had grown up in heavily populated towns and cities, few had ever butchered an animal, and some even vomited at the sight.
Nevertheless, Rei and the other leaders didn't exempt the reluctant women from the task.
It wasn't out of spite. Considering the journey ahead until they reached Gilm, the intention was for everyone to become capable of this kind of work.
Rei dismantled monsters regularly, so he had no particular aversion to butchering wild animals.
That was why he operated on the optimistic assumption that others would manage too — though among them were some who fainted at the mere sight of blood, leaving him bracing for trouble down the road.
Back in Japan, Rei had helped his father butcher chickens they kept, so he'd had little resistance to such things to begin with.
Come to think of it, manga always had scenes where students were too squeamish to dissect a frog during biology class.
As his thoughts wandered down that path, the Resistance man eventually brought the hunters over to Rei's side.
"Rei-san, just as I thought, these men are hunters from a village a short distance from here."
"I see. I'd like to stop by if possible, but... you said a short distance — exactly how far are we talking?"
The hunters snapped out of their daze at Rei's question.
Not that it was an unusual reaction.
Thanks to yesterday's efforts, more people now wore proper, if modest, clothing, but a fair number were still dressed in prostitute attire.
The very fact that he was leading such women made this group extraordinarily conspicuous.
On top of that, their leader was someone small in stature like Rei, and even the clearly more burly Resistance men showed no sign of looking down on him.
Beside Rei stood the gryphon that had effortlessly killed the boar they had been chasing — or more precisely, the one that had gotten away — and to top it all off, there were three stunningly beautiful women the likes of which they had never seen.
They had no idea where to even begin processing the sight. Faced with such a group, bewilderment was only natural.
"Ahem."
The Resistance man, reading the hunters' state of mind, gave a small cough to snap them to attention.
One of the hunters, finally roused by the cough, opened his mouth as if flustered by Rei's question.
"From here, it's about a few hours' walk."
"Is it along the highway? That would make things easier."
"No, it's not. Our village is set away from the road."
Normally, when establishing a village, one would choose a location with heavy foot traffic.
If a village sat near the highway, travelers passing through would stop and spend money.
Merchants, too, had no reservations about such locations, unlike villages deep in the mountains.
Then why build a village away from the highway? There must be some reason behind it. If that's the case, maybe it's better not to visit. But if I can shop there, I'd like to stock up on at least some supplies.
It was still morning, and given that they had lost yesterday to the rain, detouring for several hours to a village off the highway would be a waste of precious time.
But he did want to resupply.
The conclusion Rei reached was this:
"I'd like to go to that village alone and request supplies — would that be all right? Ideally, I'd want horses too, but since it'll just be me, that's probably not feasible. Cloth, clothes, food, and fodder would help. A carriage you'd be willing to sell would be great too."
"Ah, yeah. I don't think that'd be a problem, but... just you? That's..."
One of the hunters glanced at Set, who was being petted by Byune at Rei's side.
That alone made it obvious how Rei intended to reach their village.
Rei nodded to the hunters.
"Yeah, I'll ride Set. If I tell them I heard about the village from you, do you think they'd believe me?"
Rei understood full well that arriving alone on a gryphon would naturally arouse suspicion.
"Appreciate the consideration. I'm Albad. If you say you heard it from me, they won't turn you away."
Whether they'd picked up on Rei's thoughtfulness or not, the hunters bowed their heads as he said this.
Rei was mildly surprised by their deference.
If they had witnessed his power firsthand, that would be one thing — but they hadn't.
Under the circumstances, it wouldn't have been strange for them to dismiss him. And yet...
Of course, seeing a gryphon at someone's command and still choosing to act dismissive would require either an extraordinary powerhouse or a fool with no grasp of the situation.
After that exchange, Rei took to the sky with Set, heading in the direction Albad had indicated.