About an hour had passed since Rei's group parted ways with Vihera and the others. The border between the Kingdom of Mireana and Reblurina should have been coming into view by now, but there was still no sign of the envoy delegation.
Could they not have departed from their village or town yet? Rei entertained the doubt, but with the sun already risen, the possibility that they had not yet set out was unthinkable.
Of course, if there was some reason — someone in the delegation falling ill, or getting caught up in some kind of trouble — that would be another matter entirely. But in that case, finding them would be difficult for Rei's group as well.
"Grr?"
"No, it's nothing. Just... well, if we keep searching a bit longer and still find nothing, it might be better to ask around at a village or town along the way."
Thinking that was probably unnecessary, Rei stroked Set as he spoke.
If someone in the envoy delegation carried a Paired Orb, they could determine their current location through Daskar.
But Paired Orbs were items of extraordinary rarity.
Even the ones Rei and Elena possessed had taken considerable effort to obtain.
(Then maybe carrier pigeons, something like that? Or perhaps they brought along someone who uses Summoning Magic or a Tamer to deliver messages... A Gilm envoy delegation could probably manage that.)
Since Gilm was a frontier region, all manner of people gathered there.
Among them were many with rare skills, and it would not be unusual for someone to be maintaining contact with Gilm — or more precisely, with Daskar — through some means.
(But if someone with that kind of ability is traveling with them, then it wouldn't be strange for Lord Daskar to have told me beforehand.)
Gazing out at the highway, Rei mused along these lines... and just after they crossed into the Kingdom of Mireana, Set suddenly purred.
"Set?"
At first, Rei did not understand why Set had made that sound.
But when he followed Set's gaze — staring straight ahead in the direction they were traveling — he caught sight of something the size of a bean, or perhaps even smaller.
Naturally, it was a sight that only someone with far keener vision than an ordinary person — like Rei — could have spotted.
And the reason Set had found it before Rei was simply that Set's eyesight was even sharper.
"Is that... bandits?"
They were still too far away to make out faces clearly, but from what Rei could see at this distance, it looked like a fight in progress.
There was a chance they could be humanoid monsters, but from what he could observe, something felt subtly different.
Humanoid monsters came in many varieties, including Goblins and Orcs.
But even so, the fact that they were humanoid yet not quite human always carried a certain incongruity.
What Rei was looking at now was a scene free of that incongruity.
In other words — humans.
Of course, there were Elves, Dwarves, Beastmen, and various other races, so this method of identification was not entirely foolproof.
"Rei, what is wrong?"
The voice from inside the Set Basket was Elena's.
She must have sensed from Rei's demeanor that something unusual had occurred.
"Quite far ahead... no, actually, we've gotten much closer now. Either way, it looks like someone is being attacked by bandits."
Even after Rei spotted the people under attack, Set kept flying.
Given Set's speed, closing the distance quickly was no difficult feat.
"Bandits? Shall we help them, then?"
"Yeah, though... whether they actually need our help is debatable. They seem to have quite a few skilled fighters."
In his line of sight, the bandits that had attacked three carriages were being cut down one after another by a handful of escorts.
On the bandits' side, the number of corpses already littering the ground had grown considerable. While the bandits held an overwhelming numerical advantage, that was where their advantage ended.
Looking at the scene, one might wonder whether the bandits were unexpectedly weak, or the escorts were unexpectedly strong.
As for which was the reason... that was already obvious, now that their movements could be seen clearly.
"So, what are you going to do? Since bandits showed up, are you going to indulge your hobby?"
Rei hesitated slightly at Marina's words. She had been listening to his conversation with Elena with evident interest.
As Marina had pointed out, Rei did have something of a hobbyist streak when it came to bandit hunting.
Some might say his tastes were slightly questionable, but since it meant fewer bandits harassing honest merchants and travelers, Rei judged that this pursuit — serving as both hobby and practical benefit — deserved praise rather than criticism.
...That was precisely why bandits had come to fear Rei, calling him the one who devoured them — the Bandit Eater.
However, judging from the situation on the ground, the outcome was already half-decided.
The bandits were now desperately trying to exploit any gap in the escorts' guard to flee.
The escorts had no intention of letting them escape. Those who turned to run were shot in the back with arrows that claimed their lives.
Those who tried to flee without turning away found escorts with longswords and spears closing the distance in an instant to finish them off.
If everyone turned and scattered in different directions at once, a few might have managed to escape... but even among the same bandit group, no one was willing to make a move that could mean becoming a sacrifice for their comrades.
If they had possessed stronger camaraderie, there might have been a chance of turning the tide even now.
"If we interfere, we'd just be stealing their prey, so let's leave them be. If the bandits had the upper hand, that would be one thing, but the escorts are clearly winning. ...Still, those escorts are skilled."
Perhaps because he had been watching Reblurina's adventurers and guards lately, the people protecting what appeared to Rei's eyes to be rather luxurious carriages — three of them — struck him as remarkably capable.
They had a strength that would not have been out of place in Gilm rather than a place like this.
The bandits had clearly chosen the wrong targets.
Of course, with three carriages that opulent lined up together, the bandits must have seen it as a chance at a quick fortune.
(Their biggest mistake was failing to realize that carriages that luxurious would naturally employ skilled fighters as escorts.)
Whether the bandits had attacked knowing this full well, or had simply failed to notice something so obvious — Rei could not say. But considering the current situation, he could guess it was probably the latter.
"Anyway, we should—"
"Grr?"
Continue searching for the envoy delegation.
Rei was about to say as much when Set purred, cutting him off.
"Set?"
Not one to believe Set would act without reason, Rei turned his gaze toward the griffon.
Meeting Rei's eyes, Set purred happily.
(Happily?)
For a few seconds, Rei could not fathom why. But when he looked again at the escorts, the reason became immediately clear.
Among the escorts were several faces he recognized.
And there was no doubt that Set had purred happily upon spotting one of them in particular.
Because...
"Mirene? Then does that mean Scorching Wind is among the escorts?"
Yes — the party led by Mirene, who ranked among the very top in Gilm when it came to doting on Set... so devoted that she poured everything into adoring the griffon over her own livelihood, to the point of losing her living expenses entirely — that party was the C-Rank party, Scorching Wind.
They were longtime acquaintances of Rei and his group.
As a C-Rank party, their combat prowess was beyond question, and they even counted a rare mage among their members.
With people like that, overwhelming the bandits with sheer power was only natural.
Considering there were several escorts in addition to Mirene and her party, it was obvious that common bandits never stood a chance.
"And... if Mirene is here, that means..."
For Mirene, who usually operated in Gilm, to be serving as an escort in a place like this — near the border between the Kingdom of Mireana and Reblurina — was clearly out of the ordinary.
But Rei had a fair idea of what might have prompted this unusual situation.
Since Daskar had dispatched an envoy delegation, he would have certainly assigned escorts to it.
And Scorching Wind, led by Mirene, possessed more than enough ability to serve that role.
Furthermore, the three carriages that Mirene and her party were protecting were all luxurious, and one could imagine at a glance that someone of standing was riding inside.
In fact, it was easy to see how the bandits had been blinded by the carriages' opulence — and had ended up being routed by Mirene and her party as a result.
"Set, descend. It looks like we've found our target. ...Ah, cry out to let them know we're not enemies, just in case."
"Grr!"
Set nodded at Rei's words.
Still carrying the Set Basket, the griffon let out a cry and dove toward the ground below.
"Grrrrrrrrrr!"
"Eh? That cry..."
Mirene, who had just finished off the last of the attacking bandits, looked around at the cry that suddenly rang out from above.
The others who had fought alongside her as escorts also scanned their surroundings — but their reactions were entirely different from Mirene's.
While Mirene smiled at the unmistakably familiar cry, scarcely able to believe her ears, the others' expressions grew grim.
"Stay alert!"
"It's fine!"
One of the escorts shouted tensely, but Mirene immediately called back.
Naturally, Mirene's sudden declaration drew the stares of the man who had shouted and everyone else. But Mirene showed not the slightest sign of tension — no, she was smiling from the bottom of her heart as she spoke.
"Because the one who came is Set-chan."
Everyone present, Mirene included, was an escort hired in Gilm.
Naturally, they all knew Set's name, and some were aware of the fierce affection Mirene harbored for the griffon.
"Set!?"
Even so, the question of why Set would be here would not go away, and the same incredulous exclamation escaped everyone's lips.
If they had known that Rei and his group had been traveling to Reblurina to retaliate against Jaya, they would not have been so bewildered.
However, that incident had been kept secret — it was something the adventurer escorts were not supposed to know.
If anything, it was Mirene alone who had recognized Set's cry under those circumstances who was the exception.
"If Mirene says so, there's no doubt about it."
Surnin, the party's mage — who knew full well just how much Mirene doted on Set, or to put it less flatteringly, how much she had lavished upon him — declared with absolute certainty.
Ekril, the archer, silently nodded in agreement.
But the others, while willing to give some credence to those words, could not bring themselves to truly and completely believe them from the bottom of their hearts.
They did not release their weapons. They checked their surroundings, and upon confirming that Set's figure was nowhere to be seen, felt a mixture of relief and renewed wariness — a thoroughly conflicted reaction.
"Was it... our imagination?"
They had heard the cry, but no figure appeared.
Under such circumstances, perhaps the cry just now had been nothing more than their ears playing tricks on them. The man said as much without thinking — but in truth, he understood perfectly well that it had not been his imagination.
He was on edge, tense with the thought that a monster might strike at any moment from somewhere unseen... when suddenly, a voice came from the direction of the carriages.
"Hey, what's going on? If you've dealt with the bandits, let's get moving..."
The speaker was one of the men Daskar had selected as a member of this envoy delegation.
He had stepped out of the carriage because, despite the sounds of combat from outside having ceased, no one had come to report that the bandits had been repelled — and he found that strange.
Naturally, no one expected the adventurer escorts to lose to mere bandits — let alone the sort of bandits that would haunt a rural backroad like this.
As Daskar's subordinates, they acted on faith in the strength of Gilm's adventurers.
But while such an action might have been acceptable under normal circumstances, in this particular instance, it was nothing short of reckless.
"Wha—!?"
The adventurer serving as an escort was about to tell the man to get back in the carriage when — without warning — a tremendous noise, not quite a roar but a significant impact all the same, reverberated through the surroundings.
Those who frantically searched for the source of the sound and impact saw... an unfamiliar, massive basket — the object commonly known as the Set Basket.