"Huh. So this Gilm place is that unusual."
Ranigus murmured with genuine interest as he listened to Rei's explanation of Gilm.
At first glance, it hardly seemed like an act. In truth, it wasn't — Ranigus had been listening to Rei's words with sincere surprise, so his reaction was only natural.
Ranigus's family, Baron Myuzei's House, was of course also gathering intelligence on Gilm. The household itself wasn't particularly large, given its baronial rank, but as part of the King's Faction — the largest political bloc — its influence in that regard was considerable. Many King's Faction nobles had dispatched subordinates and relatives to Gilm, and they shared information among themselves.
Naturally, they didn't share everything. The King's Faction was itself divided into smaller sub-factions, so the intelligence each circle could obtain differed depending on their connections. Even so, the volume of information they could gather was substantial. Hearing about it directly from Rei, though, offered an entirely different angle.
"Hey, Rei. Is it true that a huge forest suddenly appeared near Gilm?"
Teles, who had been following the conversation between Rei and Ranigus, suddenly spoke up.
Logically speaking, discovering an existing forest was one thing, but a forest appearing overnight near a town was impossible. But in the frontier region of Gilm, something like that was entirely plausible. If anything, a mere forest sprouting up beside the town wasn't even all that strange. It wouldn't be unusual for anyone to come away with that impression.
"Yeah, it did," Rei replied. "It's called the Treant Forest. The lumber from there gets magically treated through alchemy and is used in the current expansion construction."
"Huh... so that kind of thing happens in the frontier. Sounds a bit interesting. Ara, couldn't you be useful in a forest like that?"
Teles's remark, delivered with a glance at Ara, was likely prompted by Ara's weapon of choice — the Power Axe. Given that it was shaped like an axe, as its name suggested, she'd probably be handy in a forest.
"I won't deny that."
"Oh my."
Teles cast her a look of genuine surprise, having been thoroughly convinced that Ara would take offense. But Ara didn't interpret the comment about her being useful in the Treant Forest as a backhanded jab. Sure, Teles had probably meant it that way, but Ara knew exactly how her weapon had been developed into its current form, so she didn't particularly care one way or the other.
"That said... if it's just felling trees, having Lord Rei there would be more than sufficient."
Ara had never witnessed it herself, but she knew from secondhand accounts. Where an ordinary woodcutter might take tens of minutes — sometimes up to an hour — to fell a single tree, Rei with his Death Scythe could finish the job in a single slash. Compared to someone like that, even with the Power Axe — a magic item — she couldn't possibly claim she'd be more useful.
"Oh my."
Having expected Ara to come back with her usual prickly retort, Teles muttered with a faint hint of disappointment. Still, intrigued by the comment that Rei alone would be enough, she turned her gaze toward him.
"Can you really fell trees that easily, Rei?"
"If you're asking whether I can or not, I should say yes. That said, I didn't primarily fell trees — my main job was transporting the ones the woodcutters had already cut."
"Ah, I see. Considering you have an Item Box and the weight of those logs, that would be more efficient."
Ranigus nodded in understanding.
"Which means it's harder to transport felled trees than to fell them in the first place, right?"
"That's right. Just think about it, Teles. Which is harder — cutting down a tree, or hauling that tree all the way to Gilm? It's true that the Treant Forest appeared near Gilm, but it's not right next door. 'Nearby' just means closer compared to everywhere else."
Ranigus's point was accurate. In reality, the Treant Forest wasn't a distance you could reach quickly on foot. And hauling felled logs loaded onto a custom carriage over that distance — it wouldn't be unusual for the trip to take several hours.
But for Rei, who possessed an Item Box and had Set as a means of transportation, the trip to Gilm took only minutes.
Teles nodded along with Ranigus's explanation, but then something clicked.
"Huh? Then wouldn't it not matter whether you only transport or also fell them? I mean, you can cut them down in no time, right? So why not just do it all yourself?"
Seeing Teles looking at him with that unspoken question, Rei set down the hand that had been holding the sandwich a maid had brought for him.
Incidentally, this sandwich was not one of Georgima's making. Having been taught about a dish called ramen, Georgima had immediately thrown himself into prototyping it and was far too preoccupied for anything else. So the sandwich had been brought by Georgima's subordinate — or perhaps disciple was the better word.
It was undeniably inferior in taste compared to last night's dinner or this morning's meal, but that was only relative to Georgima's cooking. While it clearly lost to the sandwiches specifically prepared for breakfast, it was still made by a cook of Duke Kerebel's household — far better than what you'd find at an ordinary bakery or eatery. Sandwiches were a simple enough dish that even Rei could make one, and he found himself mildly curious why the taste differed so noticeably. But right now, answering Teles's question took priority.
"I can fell trees, sure, but ultimately I'm just cutting through them by brute force. A professional woodcutter considers things like which trees are best suited for construction materials when they choose what to fell. Though to be fair, we're cutting down every tree in the Treant Forest anyway."
"Then what's the point of judging which trees are good or bad?"
"I won't deny that. It's just... I'm not only helping with the expansion construction. I have other work to do as well."
In truth, while assisting with the expansion construction, Rei had also traveled to Reblurina, served as an escort for those fleeing the country, gone to the sea to catch fish, and taken on all manner of other activities. When Rei was absent — or more precisely, since Set was absent too, it was one person and one creature gone — they could no longer secure construction materials. If that happened, the expansion work itself could grind to a halt. Naturally, they needed to establish a system that could keep the construction going even without Rei.
"Hmm. You sure are busy, Rei. You probably didn't even have time to spend with Lady Elena, did you?"
"—!?"
Geho—
Elena barely managed to suppress a cough, narrowly avoiding spraying her black tea in response to the words that had suddenly come out of Teles's mouth. Even so, the tea apparently went down the wrong pipe, and she coughed several times before — thanks to her abilities, enhanced by the Ancient Dragon's magic stone — she quickly recovered.
The Ancient Dragon that had previously possessed the magic stone now inherited by Elena probably never imagined that its inheritor would use its abilities for something like this.
In any case, having somehow recovered, Elena glared at Teles, who wore an amused smile. The fact that there was none of the pressure she had directed at Gaiska showed that Elena was properly exercising self-restraint.
"Teles, what are you saying so suddenly?"
"Oh my, I've been quite curious about that, you know. And so have you, haven't you?"
When Teles looked his way, Ranigus considered for a moment before nodding.
"That's right. What kind of relationship the two of you have... I've heard all sorts of rumors, and I understand it's a frequent topic of discussion within the Noble's Faction. If so, I'd naturally like to hear the truth behind those rumors."
"Not you too, Ranigus... Such matters are not for discussing in front of others, so unfortunately, I'll be exercising my right to remain silent."
Even so, the faint flush creeping into Elena's cheeks made it patently obvious — without a second thought — what kind of feelings she harbored toward Rei.
Teles and Ranigus had both originally wanted to press Elena for the full story, but they read the general situation from her current demeanor and let the matter drop. They could have pushed harder, but they judged that doing so would likely sour Elena's mood.
"Well then, let me blatantly change the subject here..."
The fact that she deliberately said "blatantly" out loud spoke volumes about Teles's mischievous nature. But before Elena or Ara could respond, Teles pressed on.
"Rei, has anything unusual happened on your quests? Anything interesting would do. When you live as a noble, you inevitably lack that kind of stimulation."
Rei, now on the spot, wondered how best to answer. In terms of stimulation, he had taken on all manner of requests over the years, and he'd also gotten himself involved in incidents outside of formal quests. But many of those were things he couldn't carelessly share with others, and quite a few involved other people's privacy.
Mulling over what to offer that didn't touch on such sensitive matters, what Rei ended up saying was — in a way — an activity that had become something of a personal hobby.
"How about bandit hunting? Something like that."
"...Bandit hunting? You mean that literally?"
Teles regarded him with evident interest. For a noble like her, bandits were not something she had ever seen with her own eyes. They existed only in stories she'd heard from others or in fairy tales.
"That's right. We go after the same bandits who normally prey on merchants and the like. Some of them hoard quite a fortune in treasure, and the bandits themselves can be captured alive and sold off as criminal slaves, so it's fairly profitable."
So said Rei, though in the past, since he had been traveling with Set, it had been difficult to bring captured bandits — taken alive — back to town or village, so more often than not, he simply killed them all. When he happened to be traveling by carriage for some reason, he would sometimes sell the captured bandits to a slave trader.
"Ahahahaha. So instead of bandits attacking, you attack the bandits? Doesn't that make you the bandit, Rei?"
"Well, if you think of it as bandit subjugation, there are quite a few quests like that for adventurers. ...Bandits are rarely found around Gilm, though, so the Guild there doesn't have that kind of work."
Even so, merchants who came to Gilm sometimes hired adventurers as escorts, and in that case, fighting bandits on the road wasn't uncommon. For bandits, Gilm's adventurers were the worst possible opponent — and conversely, for adventurers, bandits were a lucrative source of income. Though that, of course, was predicated on having enough strength to defeat them.
"Bandits attack ordinary people, and adventurers attack bandits. When you think about it that way, maybe adventurers are the ones on top."
"I wonder about that. Adventurers do their work at the request of those ordinary people, and without ordinary people, adventurers would struggle in all sorts of ways. It's a give-and-take relationship, isn't it?"
Among adventurers, there were those with various production skills, including alchemists. Those who came from families running restaurants or bakeries had often helped out from a young age and naturally picked up those kinds of skills. But such people alone were far from enough to satisfy everyone in the world. It was only because ordinary people did those everyday jobs that adventurers could live their daily lives. In that sense, one couldn't claim that adventurers stood at the very top.
"If we're going down that line of reasoning, wouldn't nobles or royalty be the ones on top?"
"...Now that you mention it, I suppose so."
"For a poor noble family like mine, I don't really get that sense, though."
Ranigus chimed in on Rei and Teles's exchange. His family was a baron household — overwhelmingly low in the peerage hierarchy. It certainly wasn't a status that entitled one to enjoy tea at a duke's estate. Not that the man himself showed any sign of that.
"Is that so? I heard your ceramics trade is doing quite well."
"I'd be happy to hear Lady Elena say so, but they're not really that high-end."
And so, without paying the slightest mind to Gaiska's disappearance, the group simply enjoyed their idle conversation.