The day after delivering the special potion, Rei, Elena, Marina, Vihera, Byune, Reliu, Ielo, and Set — six people and two creatures — were airborne.
As always, Set did the flying, with Rei on his back and the others inside the Set Basket.
From their vantage point, they could still make out Golts in the distance.
The sun hung more or less directly overhead, putting the time around ten in the morning.
They had originally planned to depart when the six o'clock bell rang, but the reason for the delay was simple: before leaving Golts, a large crowd — Guild members included — had turned out to see them off.
The Local Deputy was among those who came, and naturally, the farewell took on a rather lavish tone.
Having learned that the dungeon he had assumed was a recent, minor development near Golts was in fact a vicious affair, the deputy likely wanted to express at least some measure of gratitude to Rei and his party.
This region fell under the territory of a noble affiliated with the Neutral Faction. Rei — widely regarded as the right-hand man of Daskar, who led the Neutral Faction — had conquered that dungeon for them. The deputy could hardly let that pass without acknowledgment.
...However, while others saw Rei as Daskar's trusted confidant, Rei himself had no such intention.
He certainly respected and trusted Daskar, and if a request came from him, Rei wanted to prioritize it.
But that and actually serving Daskar were, at least in Rei's mind, entirely separate things.
In any case, while it hadn't quite reached the level of a grand ceremony, a great deal had happened, and there was no denying their departure had been delayed as a result.
Even so, the reason Rei never voiced any complaint was probably because most of the people who came to see them off felt genuine gratitude toward his party.
"All things considered... this whole affair turned out to be pretty rewarding."
"Gruu?"
At Rei's murmur, Set purred as if to ask, Really?
Indeed, both Set and Death Scythe had managed to strengthen various skills through this ordeal.
Most importantly for Rei, leveling up Death Scythe's Terrain Manipulation skill was a huge gain.
Terrain Manipulation was a highly convenient skill, so long as it was used correctly.
As the battle against Garangiga had demonstrated, it could be used in combat... and beyond that, it could be applied to all manner of construction work.
Simple trenches, for instance, could be created with ease.
But precisely because it was so convenient, it was naturally not easy to level up.
Currently, the only known method to raise the skill's level was to strike a dungeon core with Death Scythe.
In other words, strengthening Terrain Manipulation required conquering a dungeon.
And naturally, a dungeon was not a place that could be easily conquered.
(I should ask the Guild to search for locations where newly formed dungeons have appeared. The Guild would be well-suited to gathering that kind of information. Like with this case.)
Granted, this particular case had been coincidence layered on coincidence.
Given that, finding a newly formed dungeon so easily was unlikely.
Which was exactly why he would make it a formal request.
(I've taken quite a few requests from the Guild with Gilm's expansion... so in that sense, the timing might work out conveniently.)
Lost in thought, Rei looked up at the sky.
What met his gaze was a blue sky nearly devoid of clouds.
There had been a fair amount of cloud cover that morning, but seeing how clear it was now, he let out a sigh of relief, knowing there was no need to worry about rain.
"Gruu?"
Perhaps curious about Rei shifting on his back, Set turned to look at him with a purr.
Rei shook his head to indicate it was nothing — then his eyes caught something in his line of sight.
Not a main road... but a carriage racing through a copse of trees where no road existed.
And several men firing arrows at that carriage.
Normally, it would be difficult for someone on foot to keep pace with a carriage.
But that assumed an open road.
A carriage required the horse pulling it and the body carrying its passengers.
Strictly speaking, there were other necessary components as well, but the point stood: because it was a carriage rather than a lone horse, its speed was inevitably limited. More importantly, driving through a copse meant carefully judging the gaps between trees to pass through.
A misjudgment could wedge the carriage body between two trunks, bringing it to a dead halt.
That was why they couldn't build up any real speed — and why they likely couldn't shake their pursuers.
(Bandits? ...Well, the fact that they're traveling through a copse instead of on the main road means the carriage has its own shady circumstances, but...)
While Rei was curious about the carriage, his stronger interest was, naturally, in the bandits.
If these were ordinary bandits — no, even if they were, Rei would have happily hunted them down — but this time there was a difference.
What if those bandits were the very ones Rei had been searching for yesterday — the ones who had stolen the special potion that was supposed to be transported from Saumis?
That was what crossed his mind.
They had already put considerable distance between themselves and Golts.
Given that, the possibility was real.
Of course, bandits were the sort that no matter how many you hunted down, they kept springing up from who knows where.
That being the case, there was no guarantee the bandits Rei had just spotted were the ones in question.
No — the odds of that were actually lower.
Even so, for Rei, the fact that they were bandits alone was reason enough to act.
He was also curious about the seemingly shady carriage... but that would come later.
"Found bandits! Going down for a bit!"
He called out briefly to the Set Basket, then asked Set to descend.
Set purred and dove toward the ground. After setting the Set Basket down at the edge of the copse, he charged straight into the trees without losing momentum.
He plunged into the copse at considerable speed, but with Set's athletic ability, dodging the sort of trees that grew in a copse was no difficult feat.
"Bururururu!?"
The horse pulling the carriage up ahead caught sight of Set and let out a violent whinny.
It had been running desperately when a gryphon suddenly appeared right before its eyes.
It would have been unreasonable to expect the horse not to panic.
The startled horse thrashed about, desperately trying to escape Set as he charged toward it.
To the horse, the gryphon before its eyes was a far greater source of terror than the bandits chasing from behind.
A tiger at the front gate, a wolf at the back — or rather, a dragon — well, a gryphon — at the front, and a goblin at the rear, so to speak.
But once the carriage tipped over, the horse hitched to it could no longer move either.
"Hihhihihiin!"
A mournful cry tore from the horse's throat.
Being targeted by a gryphon — an absolute predator — in this situation, it surely understood there was no escape.
But Set, carrying Rei on his back, raced right past the despairing horse and advanced toward the bandits behind the carriage.
For a moment, the horse wore a bewildered expression as if it had no idea what had just happened, but neither Rei nor Set paid it the slightest attention.
Their actions were the worst possible scenario for the bandits who had been chasing the carriage from behind.
"Wha—!?"
The man at the forefront of the bandits let out a cry of shock as Rei and Set suddenly appeared from beside the carriage — but in the next instant, the shaft of the Twilight Spear, drawn from the Misty Ring, struck him across the torso and sent him flying.
From the bandits' perspective, it was as if the prey they had been attacking had suddenly struck back.
That wasn't what had actually happened, of course, but that was certainly how it looked to them.
Seeing their lead man sent flying only reinforced the impression.
"You've gotta be kidding me, you bastard! You think you can get away with defying us?!"
One bandit shouted as much, but one after another, they were struck down by Rei's swinging Twilight Spear.
...The unlucky ones had their throats slit by the spearhead and died on the spot. Others, even those struck in the torso, had been hit with Rei's full brute strength — some suffered ruptured organs, while others had their necks snapped by the impact of crashing into trees.
As bandits were sent flying one after another, the rest naturally noticed something was terribly wrong.
"Watch out, something's here! Not the prey — something else entirely!"
"Correct."
Rei blew away the shouting bandit with a single strike of the Twilight Spear... and from there, it didn't take long for the bandits to be annihilated.
"Now then... that leaves the question of that carriage... but this one's definitely dead, huh."
Having finished off the bandits, Rei's gaze turned to the man lying on the ground.
Had that been the only factor, he might have assumed the man was merely unconscious.
But with multiple arrows jutting from his body and no sign of movement, he was almost certainly dead.
Rei had already deduced that this carriage had shady circumstances from the fact that it was traveling through a copse off the main road rather than in plain sight.
But with the one person who could explain those circumstances dead, there was nothing to be done.
"Ugh... uuuh..."
As Rei weighed his options, he caught a break — or perhaps, considering what lay ahead, it was bad luck. Either way, the groan of a bandit who had lost consciousness reached his ears.
Rei had been glancing between the carriage and the bandits, but even though he had roughed them up, the possibility of the survivors fleeing meant he couldn't just leave them unattended.
He had been planning to investigate the carriage after dealing with them — when Elena and the others appeared at exactly that moment.
"Seriously, you always act so suddenly."
Elena's exasperated tone stemmed from the fact that, while Rei had called out a warning before attacking the bandits, it had come completely out of the blue.
Before they knew it, the Set Basket had been dumped on the ground.
Considering that, it was still relatively fortunate that Elena's expression held exasperation rather than anger.
"Sorry. It was a bit urgent."
"...So it seems."
Marina, emerging from behind Elena, murmured as she surveyed the scene — her gaze settling on the overturned carriage with particular attention.
Naturally, suspicion regarding the carriage's unnatural behavior was woven into her tone.
"For now... we'll secure the surviving bandits. Why don't you go store the Set Basket, Rei? I left Reliu over there, so there shouldn't be any problems, but..."
At Vihera's words as she stepped forward next, Rei nodded in understanding.
With Reliu there, no fool would be stupid enough to mess with the Set Basket.
But that wasn't an absolute certainty — there might be bandits, or even monsters, foolish enough to pick a fight with Reliu without realizing the gap in their abilities.
Given that, it was undoubtedly better for Rei, who had the Misty Ring, to store the Set Basket himself.
"Got it. I'll leave it to you. Use this to tie up the ones still breathing."
He pulled rope from the Misty Ring and handed it to Vihera, then mounted Set and headed out of the copse.
The Set Basket hadn't been left that far away, so there was no real need to ride Set to get there — but Set had rubbed his face against Rei with a purr, clearly wanting to come along, and Rei had no intention of refusing him.
If there had been other monsters or bandits nearby making things dangerous, it would have been a different story... but under the current circumstances, there was no need to worry about that.
Riding Set through the copse, the scene that greeted him was exactly what Rei expected.
Reliu stood in front of the Set Basket, looking thoroughly displeased.
He had naturally noticed Rei and Set approaching, and opened his mouth with a dissatisfied expression.
"Hey, you can't just do that out of nowhere."
"Sorry. Things were a bit urgent on our end too. I found a carriage being attacked by bandits."
"...Bandits? In a copse instead of on the main road?"
Reliu's expression turned dubious at Rei's words.
With a main road nearby, it would be unreasonable not to find the situation suspicious.
But Rei had seen the carriage under attack with his own eyes, and the coachman who had been driving it was already dead from the bandits' assault.
Given that, there was nothing to do but report the facts as they were.
"That's right. There's clearly something going on with it... shady circumstances, to say the least. And I've got my own interest in those bandits, too."
Saying that, Rei touched the Set Basket and stored it into the Misty Ring.