"…Don't you feel something strange?"
Rei had entered Gilm and was surveying his surroundings when a vague sense of incongruity washed over him.
A short distance away, a guard who had been processing the next person in line turned his gaze toward Rei. He looked out over the city streets, but apparently sensing nothing wrong, he tilted his head and called out.
"Really? From what I can see, it looks like any other day. …What exactly is different?"
"You're asking me? It's more like… the atmosphere?"
"The atmosphere? …Hold on a second." The guard excused himself from the person whose paperwork he'd been processing and looked out over Gilm's streets once more.
What he saw was the same lively bustle as always. With far more people moving about than usual due to Gilm's expansion construction, the scene appeared to the guard as nothing more than a vibrant everyday life.
The reason he'd gone so far as to halt the entry processing to check his surroundings was simple: Rei's intuition was something he trusted. Having been shown Rei's abilities time and time again, when Rei said something felt off, the guard was in no position to simply brush it aside.
But even knowing that, when the guard checked the area, he didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
"Hmm, really? From what I can see, there's nothing off. Just the usual scene. …It's not that, is it?" He pointed to a merchant and an adventurer who were arguing a short distance away.
If you listened closely, you could pick up snippets about the escort's poor attitude and the meals being worse than promised. From that alone, it was easy to guess what had happened—a dispute between a merchant and the adventurer they'd hired as an escort.
If it were a matter of gathering materials or a subjugation request for a specific monster, that would be one thing, but escort duties always involved someone who needed protecting. In those cases, compatibility issues and various other problems between the two parties could lead to the kind of squabbling Rei was witnessing now. It wasn't frequent, but it wasn't rare either.
Though admittedly, there were some who would deliberately cause a scene hoping to shave even a little off the escort fee.
That, however, was a terrible move. Word would naturally spread among adventurers, and not only would many become reluctant to accept escort requests from that person, they'd hesitate to take on any request at all. In worse cases, the Guild might even refuse to process their requests outright. For a merchant, that was tantamount to a fatal blow—bankruptcy at worst.
That said, it had nothing to do with Rei. He watched the exchange from afar, then shook his head.
"No, that's not it. It's something else entirely."
"…Even if you say that, I can't tell what it is. Hey, you got a second?"
"I don't feel anything off either."
The guard who'd been talking with Rei called out to another guard processing entries a short distance away, but that was the response he got.
"…See? Maybe it really is just your imagination, Rei?"
"Even if you say that, there's definitely something off. …What do you think, Set?"
"Gruu."
Set purred, as if agreeing with Rei.
It wasn't that Set was blindly backing him up; rather, Set had likely also sensed something off about the atmosphere pervading Gilm.
"Not just Rei, but Set too." The guard's murmur took on a more serious edge.
If it were only Rei who sensed something wrong, the guard wouldn't be wearing such a grave expression. The same would apply if it were only Set. But with both Rei and Set picking up on it, that changed things entirely.
"Hmm… what do you want to do? With both you and Set saying so, I feel like there must be something to it. Do you want to wait outside Gilm until it becomes clear?"
It was the best suggestion the guard could offer. If something was inside Gilm right now, then simply not entering meant there was nothing to worry about. It was a passive approach, but when it came to this feeling of incongruity—or danger, as it could equally be called—not approaching it was undoubtedly the safest choice.
But Rei shook his head.
"No, I'm going on into Gilm as is. I don't know what's causing this feeling, and since I don't know how long it'll last, retreating here would be pointless."
"Well… I suppose that's true." The guard couldn't argue with that.
Given the situation, they had no idea what in Gilm was causing the incongruity. At the very least, the guard couldn't put a finger on the reason himself.
"Right? So don't worry about it."
"…No, when you say 'don't worry' in the middle of that conversation, it doesn't really follow."
"Don't sweat it. Entering Gilm without noticing the incongruity might be dangerous, but going in when you're already aware of it makes dealing with it a lot easier. Knowing there's a trap versus not knowing—the former is more reassuring, right?"
"Normally, if you know there's a trap, you avoid it altogether." The guard shot back, though he understood the point. In this case, with the trap inside Gilm, Rei couldn't exactly sidestep it and go about his business.
"In my case, I'd push through while destroying the trap. …Anyway, I don't know what's causing this feeling, but since there's a good chance something will happen, guards might be needed. I'm counting on you if things go south."
"Ugh… true. Looking at you, Rei, there's no doubt an incident's coming. And going by past experience, a pretty big one. …Understood. But it'd really help us out if you could avoid destroying the surrounding buildings as much as possible."
"I'll take that under favorable consideration and strive to move in a direction that addresses the matter."
"…What is that? Some kind of magic incantation?"
"Something like that."
After exchanging those words with the guard, Rei took a step forward—then suddenly remembered he'd been attacked by assassins yesterday, and turned back to ask.
"Come to think of it, have you heard anything about me getting attacked by assassins yesterday?"
"Yeah, I heard about that. Apparently they're keeping silent."
"Tight-lipped, huh."
Rei had handed the two would-be assassins from yesterday over to the guards, hoping they might extract some information, but that expectation had fallen through. The fact that the person in charge of interrogation had questioned them and they still wouldn't talk meant they weren't just some common thugs, but properly trained operatives.
Then again, thinking back on the fight itself, Rei had already understood at the time that they were no ordinary street toughs.
"Yeah. …Still, with no other options, we just have to leave it to the experts. Unless you want to interrogate them yourself, Rei?"
"I'll pass."
Rei had no skill in interrogation. If they'd been common thugs, a light beating and a clear demonstration of the gap in strength would have had them singing in no time. But someone trained to resist interrogation? No matter how much Rei pressed them without the proper techniques, it would only mean hurting them for nothing—which was just torture.
Since he lacked the skills, he saw no reason to force the issue himself.
The guard probably hadn't been serious about the offer anyway. He nodded readily.
"Then leave that side to us. More importantly, that incongruity you mentioned… be careful."
At the end of the day, Rei and the guard went way back—all the way to when Rei first arrived in Gilm. That was why, even knowing Rei's strength, the guard still voiced the warning aloud.
Rei waved a hand casually in response and headed deeper into Gilm.
With every step forward, the sense of incongruity grew stronger.
(What is this? If it were hostility or killing intent, I'd get it. But it's not anything like that… just a sense of incongruity.)
If it were hostility or killing intent, dealing with it wouldn't be difficult. But what lingered there was incongruity—not hostility, not killing intent. And that very incongruity was what was slowing Rei down.
"Set, can you tell?"
"Gruu…"
Rei asked as they walked through the crowd, but Set only purred apologetically.
If they were outside Gilm, somewhere with few people, Set might have been able to pinpoint the source. But this was Gilm, packed with people—and even more so than usual, thanks to the expansion construction. Trying to track down the origin of the incongruity in a crowd like that was difficult, even for Set.
"So what do we do? Until we figure out what this incongruity really is, do you think we should hold off on delivering the felled trees?"
"Gruu…"
Set purred uncertainly, clearly unsure of what to do.
Rei patted Set's head.
Just then, as if spotting Set in that moment of hesitation, several children came running over.
"Ah, it's Set, it's Set! Yay, Set! Let's play!"
"Wait up! I wanna play with Set-chan too!"
Children who couldn't have been even ten years old clamored to play with Set. Normally, Rei would have let them have some time with him, but given the current situation, that was out of the question.
"Sorry, I'm a little busy right now. Could you play with Set another time?"
Said like that, any normal person—especially an adventurer—would immediately get the picture and leave them be. Even non-adventurers would do the same. But this time was different. The other party was children under ten. There was no way they'd understand what Rei meant and simply go along with it.
"Ehh! No way! I wanna play with Set! I said I wanna play… waaaaaaaaah!"
Ugh. Whether overwhelmed by emotion or not, the child suddenly burst into tears, and Rei panicked. He never expected to deal with a crying child out of nowhere in a place like this. For a moment, he was at a loss.
The whole reason he couldn't let the child play with Set in the first place was the incongruity he'd been sensing. Should he just leave the crying child be? Should he calm them down and let them play with Set? Or should he distract them with something sweet like dried fruit?
While Rei wavered, a crying child naturally drew attention. And crying next to Set made it all the more conspicuous. Feeling the weight of the surrounding stares and unsure what to do, Rei gave in. He patted the child's head and handed over some dried fruit.
"Here, I'll give you this, so stop crying."
"Eguh?"
Perhaps drawn by the sweet fragrance that drifted over, the child stopped crying. They took the dried fruit Rei offered and, guided by the scent, popped it into their mouth.
"Fwah…"
The concentrated sweetness of the dried fruit spread through the child's mouth.
Rei, who had grown up in Japan, had been able to buy sweets at the local candy shop since he was small. But in this world, sweets were fundamentally a luxury. Not so expensive that ordinary citizens couldn't afford them, but certainly beyond what a child could buy with pocket money. In that sense, the child who'd received dried fruit from Rei was genuinely lucky.
And naturally, when one child got something that delicious, the others wanted it too.
"Hey, mister. Can I have some too?"
"Ah, me, me!"
"I want some too."
A crowd of children pressed in, all demanding dried fruit. Rei wasn't sure what to do, but figuring that giving it to only one would just set off another round of tears, he pulled additional dried fruit from his Misty Ring.
"Here, you can all have some. But Set and I are a little busy right now, so save playing with him for next time. Okay—!?"
Just as Rei was about to finish saying "Okay?", he caught a sharp flash of killing intent—for just an instant—and snapped his gaze toward it.
But by the time his eyes found the direction, the killing intent had already vanished. Rei had no way of knowing who had emitted it.
(Still, figuring out that the incongruity is tied to killing intent… or more precisely, to something concealing it, was worth something.)
With that thought, Rei handed out the dried fruit to the children.