After finishing his statement at the Guard Station, Rei stepped outside.
Incidentally, the old woman who had been the victim this time had already finished giving hers and gone home long ago.
The guards had deliberately saved Rei for last — probably figuring that given some time, his temper would cool.
Here in Gilm, the home base of Rei, Bearer of the Crimson Moniker, there were people wrapping red cloth around their arms and committing crimes — robberies and thefts, no less — one after another in recent days.
There was no way Rei could see such a thing and not feel indignation.
The guards understood how he felt, but they also knew that if they let him walk outside while his blood was still up, he'd go charging off to hunt down anyone wearing red cloth on their arm.
In truth, if Rei had left the station while still seething, the chances of him doing exactly that were far from zero.
But thanks to the guards' judgment, his irritation had eased, if only slightly.
"Gururu?"
Set noticed Rei emerging from the station and purred happily.
A small crowd of people — men and women, young and old — surrounded Set, petting him, feeding him treats, and generally doting on him.
When Set stood up upon seeing Rei, they didn't try to hold him back and let him go.
...Though a few wore disappointed expressions.
"For now, let's take a walk through town. That was the first time I've actually seen one of those red cloth types today. It's possible I just hadn't noticed them before."
"Guruu!"
Set purred happily at Rei's words.
Set knew that walking through town meant searching for the people wearing red cloth on their arms.
But to Set, simply being together with Rei was the most enjoyable thing of all.
Being pampered by all sorts of people, like before, was certainly something he liked too.
At any rate, that was how Rei and Set came to be strolling aimlessly through town — until...
"Oh."
Spotting a stall selling nikuman, Rei let out an impressed-sounding murmur.
It was the same stall Rei had gotten involved with a short while back.
Of course, the ones who had given advice to the stall — which had been selling thoroughly mediocre nikuman — were the people who had been using the nearby training ground at the time.
That nikuman stall had since moved away from the training ground and now occupied a spot on the main street with heavy foot traffic.
Rei had heard that stall placements were determined by popularity and sales rankings for the time being, and judging by its current location, business was clearly booming.
The handful of customers lined up was proof enough of that.
"Is this really Goblin meat!? I tried some when I first became an adventurer, and there was no way I could stomach the stuff!"
"Yes, it really is Goblin meat. We get specially processed Goblin meat from the Percy Item Shop and use that."
"...Does that mean Goblin meat is going to be edible from now on?"
"Um, unfortunately, that won't be possible. I hear they've gotten to where they can produce this much Goblin meat, but they said they still can't manage much more than this."
"Is that so? That's a shame. If Goblin meat could taste this good, it would really help out adventurers who are just starting out and broke."
Rei listened to the exchange but figured it would still be a long time before Goblin meat became widespread enough for that adventurer's hopes to become reality.
Making Goblin meat edible — or more precisely, making it deliciously edible — required several ingredients, with Gamelion internal organs at the core.
The biggest bottleneck among them was, predictably, the Gamelion internal organs.
A monster that only appeared in autumn was inherently that precious.
If it were a monster that showed up frequently year-round like Goblins, they could have mass-produced delicious Goblin meat right then and there.
"Looks busy enough, so I'll skip the greeting."
"Guruu."
At Rei's words, Set let out a slightly disappointed purr.
Honestly, Set had been hoping to sneak a few nikuman.
Unlike the batch before, while it wasn't quite at the level of "exquisite," the fact that it had become something you could genuinely call tasty was a big step forward.
"Nikuman can wait until next time."
So said Rei — but the time to depart for Duke Kerebel's Territory with Elena was fast approaching.
Once that happened, nikuman would obviously be off the table... but he figured he could always have some after returning to Gilm in the new year.
In Rei's mind, nikuman was something you ate in cold weather — autumn and winter, for instance — and that perception was spreading alongside the food itself.
Naturally, Rei had no particular objection to stalls selling nikuman in spring or summer, but as a show of gratitude toward the man who had popularized the dish, that was how they chose to treat it.
That convention, however, was strictly a Gilm thing. If nikuman spread to other villages, towns, and cities, it wouldn't be strange at all for shops to start selling it year-round.
Even if that did happen, Rei had no intention of complaining.
Eating nikuman in cold weather was, after all, simply his personal preference.
Back in his old world, a place like a Chinatown would have shops selling nikuman and similar items all year round, and customers buying them were nothing unusual.
...Though he did seem to recall seeing on TV once that sales dropped on days when the temperature climbed past thirty degrees.
"Alright, let's move on. I need to track down those idiots quickly. The longer they keep stirring up pointless trouble, the more of a headache it is for the rest of us."
Seeing the nikuman stall thriving steadied Rei's mood, if only a little.
He still couldn't forgive those who flaunted red cloth on their arms, but he was no longer in a search-and-destroy, eliminate-on-sight frame of mind.
That said, he had absolutely no intention of letting them go if he did find people wearing red cloth.
He had, however, calmed down enough to settle for beating them half to death rather than the eighty percent he'd originally been aiming for.
"Oh, isn't that Rei? What are you up to?"
While walking through town, a voice called out to him.
He looked toward it and found Vihera, Byune, and several others who appeared to be adventurers.
"Just looking for something... no, someone. More importantly, are you on patrol?"
"Yes. It seems all kinds of incidents keep cropping up no matter what we do."
"...Those incidents wouldn't happen to involve people with red cloth wrapped around their arms, would they?"
"Red cloth?"
Vihera paused at Rei's words, as if trying to recall something... then nodded.
"Now that you mention it, there was a man like that during a scuffle. What about him?"
The answer came far too readily, and Rei felt a twinge of unease.
There was no particular displeasure in Vihera's tone.
If she had seen a red-clothed man snatching bags like the one Rei had witnessed, there was no way she'd be speaking so casually about it.
Vihera loved a good fight, but she had no patience for the kind of people who used force to take from the weak.
That was what struck him as off.
"A scuffle, huh. What was that red-clothed man like?"
"What do you mean, what was he like? When we told them to break it up, he stopped right away. Even apologized for causing us trouble."
"...The red-clothed man did?"
"Yes."
Vihera nodded without hesitation.
Seeing that, Rei's doubts only deepened.
The man Set had taken down and this man Vihera described were nothing alike.
In other words... they knew Vihera was my ally and backed off immediately?
That Rei and Vihera traveled together was common knowledge in Gilm.
And Vihera — a stunningly beautiful woman dressed in the kind of revealing garments you'd expect on a dancer or a prostitute — was unmistakable at a glance.
Thinking about it that way, it was entirely plausible that someone had recognized her as Rei's ally and apologized meekly to avoid getting on her bad side.
Which means... that red cloth really is aimed at me? But why? Well, I'm not saying I haven't made enemies, but...
Far from not making enemies, given everything Rei had done up to this point, there was no shortage of people who harbored grudges against him.
He hadn't hesitated to use force against nobles, had killed countless bandits, sold them off as criminal slaves, and in war, scores had lost their lives to Rei and Set.
There were plenty of others who resented him for various reasons.
To people like that, Rei was someone they could never hate enough.
That said, they also knew exactly what would happen if they carelessly crossed him — they'd experienced it firsthand — so there weren't many who would actually dare to try.
"What's wrong?"
"No... it's just that those people wrapping red cloth around their arms have been on my mind."
Rei answered Vihera's question and explained how the old woman had nearly been robbed and how Set had stopped it.
"I see. Since they're going out of their way to wear red cloth, the man who was brawling and the one Set clobbered are almost certainly connected."
"Nn."
The one who agreed with Vihera's words wasn't Rei... but Byune.
Rei found it genuinely surprising that Byune would volunteer an opinion like this here.
And it wasn't just him. The other adventurers traveling with Vihera and Byune also turned startled looks toward her.
"Um... what exactly did she mean?"
As if prodded by the expectant stares of everyone around, Rei turned to Vihera.
He'd known Byune for a fair while now, but even so, he couldn't read her the way Vihera could.
...Still, he was getting better at it — to a very limited extent.
"She's saying it's obvious — because people are going around wearing red cloth on their arms."
"I see. So she was thinking the same thing I was. ...Anyway, if anyone spots someone with red cloth, let me know."
Rei decided there was no point overthinking Byune's reasoning here and let it go.
Normally, he might have wished he could understand her a little better... but unfortunately, he had more pressing matters to deal with right now than pondering that.
Perhaps sensing as much, Vihera didn't try to stretch the conversation further.
"Will do. I'll let you know the moment we spot one. ...Just keep in mind, if someone in red cloth actually causes trouble, we'll be taking them into custody ourselves."
"That's fine by me. ...Ah."
After replying to Vihera, it suddenly hit him.
He didn't need to go combing the streets for people in red cloth — he could have just interrogated the man Set had knocked unconscious, the one who'd tried to rob the old woman.
That he'd failed to realize something so straightforward was proof of just how hot his temper had been running.
In that state, the thought had completely slipped his mind — and even after cooling down somewhat at the station, it still hadn't occurred to him.
"What is it?"
"Nothing. My blood was running hotter than I realized. I should have been able to get information about the Red Cloth Group much more easily than this."
"I see. ...But be careful, okay?"
At first, Rei thought she might be joking, but one look at Vihera's face told him there was nothing lighthearted about it. She was dead serious.
"You think I'd lose to people like that?"
"I don't. But the same goes for them, doesn't it? There's no way they believe they can take you on head-on and accomplish anything. And yet they're provoking you this openly. That being the case... I don't think it's a stretch to assume they're plotting something."
"...Now that you put it that way, it's certainly possible."
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the situation wouldn't dream of fighting Rei directly — Vihera was right about that.
The fact that they were doing it anyway meant they had to have some kind of plan.
"Right. I'd better stay on my guard."
With those words, Rei thanked Vihera for the warning.