Having listened to Bob's stories as a hunter, Rei now held up his end of the bargain, sharing tales of his life as an adventurer.
Bob turned out to be a surprisingly good listener. He reacted to Rei's accounts with surprise, laughter, sorrow, and anger.
Before they knew it, the hour had grown late enough to be called midnight in Elgin.
"Well, it's getting late. Time to call it a night," Rei said. "I'm going to sleep in the Magic Tent. Bob... let's see, you can at least use this."
Rei pulled a thick cloth from his Misty Ring and handed it over.
It was already autumn. While the days were still reasonably warm—and occasionally even hot—the nights and mornings had grown cold. Even sleeping near the campfire, Bob might still feel the chill. He was wearing a mantle, so there probably wasn't much need to worry, but Rei handed him the cloth just in case.
"Thank you, Rei-san." Bob accepted it gladly, clearly thinking it would come in handy when the cold set in.
Rei gave him a casual wave and headed back toward the Magic Tent.
"See ya. Let's meet again tomorrow," Nielson called out to Bob before chasing after Rei and disappearing inside the tent.
Bob watched them go. Once he was alone—well, alone with Seto, at least—he approached the gryphon.
"Seto, I'll be bedding down here for the night. Please look after me."
"Guruu."
Seto let out a low purr in response. Bob looked mildly surprised, but a smile quickly found its way to his face.
When he had first stumbled toward the campfire, he had been so startled by Seto's presence that he screamed. But after talking with Rei and Nielson and interacting with Seto even just a little, Bob hadn't fully let his guard down, yet he had clearly grown more at ease.
That was precisely why he made a point of greeting Seto before bed—just in case something happened.
Seemingly satisfied that the greeting was enough, Bob moved away from Seto and settled down beside the campfire. Normally, tending the fire—adding wood and adjusting it so it wouldn't burn too hot—was Seto's job. But tonight, Bob appeared to be taking over. Since Bob had no idea that Seto tended the campfire, he naturally assumed the task fell to him. Rei hadn't mentioned it, after all. Had Seto simply done it as usual, Bob would have understood the situation. At any rate, Bob drifted off to sleep to rest his weary body.
Far from the riverbank where Rei's group had made camp, several men gathered in the darkness.
"How is it?" a man's voice echoed through the night.
Hearing this, another man nodded with his eyes closed.
"He's asleep. At the very least, his eyes are shut."
"I see. But... I thought he was alone. What on earth happened? Did he plan to meet up with them from the start?"
"You're asking me? How would I know? But... right. With him is a gryphon. And an adventurer. ...And a fairy."
"A fairy, huh. Honestly, I never thought we'd find one out here. I always figured a fairy's heart would be the hardest thing to track down. Doesn't this mean our luck has finally turned?"
A different man chimed in, but the others—including the first two speakers—shot him looks of sheer disbelief.
"Are you serious? No, are you out of your mind? The guy has a gryphon as a Tamed Monster. It's obvious who he is without even thinking. You want to pick a fight with someone bearing the Crimson alias?"
"I'm not saying I want to fight Crimson head-on. But fighting Crimson and stealing a fairy's heart are two different things. I'm saying we could pull it off. Besides... you know as well as I do that it's not so much that we could pull it off, but that we have to."
"Ugh... that's..."
He wasn't wrong. Given their mission, prioritizing the fairy's heart over killing Bob wasn't unthinkable.
"I get what you're saying, but that fairy is traveling with Crimson. You really think you can do something to it under those circumstances?"
"Yeah. During the war with the Bestia Empire, Crimson took down the enemy single-handedly, right? And they say he did the same during the Bestia Empire's civil war afterward. No matter how you slice it, he's not someone we can take on and win."
The others nodded in agreement.
In truth, Rei hadn't single-handedly won the war or ended the civil war through his power alone. But rumors had a way of snowballing as they spread. A story about killing one Goblin would balloon into five, then ten, then an entire pack, then a Goblin High-ranking Species, then a Goblin army. In that sense, since Rei's rumors had been outrageous from the very beginning, they hadn't grown quite as absurdly. Still, they had reached the point where people claimed he had soloed the Bestia Imperial Army and ended the civil war all by himself.
What made it worse was that the current Rei and Seto actually possessed enough power to pull off such feats.
"Anyway, right now it's Bob, not the fairy. I can't imagine he'll keep traveling with Crimson forever. They should part ways by tomorrow morning... or in a few days at most."
That was less a prediction than wishful thinking. Still, as far as the men knew, there was no prior connection between Bob and Rei. They could only see what Bob's eyes had seen; they couldn't hear what was being said. Even so, having visual intel was incomparably better than having nothing at all. For the men, Bob traveling with Rei was a development they desperately wanted to avoid.
If it were just Bob, they had every confidence they could handle him.
Bob, being a hunter, had decent skill with a bow. He didn't stay in one place to hunt; he traveled while doing so, and without considerable skill, he never would have survived that lifestyle. In that sense, the very fact that he hunted while traveling was proof enough of his competence.
...Unfortunately, it was precisely because he traveled and hunted that he had ended up in the crosshairs of these men.
"So, what's the plan? Even a guy with the Crimson alias is defenseless when he's sleeping. If it's us, we can sneak into that tent. And if we pull it off, we'll be rewarded from above for killing an alias-holding adventurer, won't we?"
The words of the man who had been pushing to take the fairy's—Nielson's—heart carried considerable weight with the group. Being praised from above meant that much to these men.
"Fine, let's do it. But the top priority is still Bob's life. He saw what he saw, so we have to kill him no matter what."
"I still think we should prioritize the fairy's heart. For starters, that Bob guy doesn't even understand what he saw, right? So if he notices we're tailing him, he might put two and two together and realize whatever he witnessed is the reason all this is happening."
"That's... true, but our orders are explicitly to kill Bob. It's fine for now, but what if he learns the significance of what he saw later? What happens then? Panicking when that moment comes will be too late."
"That's... well..."
Even the man advocating for the fairy's heart couldn't argue back immediately. He clearly understood that such a scenario would be disastrous.
"Then it's settled—Bob is the primary target. Agreed?"
One man—the one leading the group—spoke, and everyone present nodded in assent. Even the man who had pushed for the fairy's heart showed no intention of defying the leader and voiced no further complaints.
The leader nodded in satisfaction and immediately began devising a plan to kill Bob, seize the fairy's heart if possible, and eliminate Crimson too. But the plan came together quickly. There was only one thing to do at a time like this.
"As usual, we're bandits. And as bandits, it's perfectly natural to attack travelers we find camping in the wild. Especially a lone sentry keeping watch outside a tent—he'd be the first target."
The men nodded in unison. No one looked particularly uneasy; they had done this countless times before.
For men like them, the bandit disguise was incredibly convenient. Bandits were everywhere in this world. So if they attacked an enemy or a nuisance, it would naturally be blamed on bandits.
...Naturally, there was also the risk that their targets would fight back and kill them. And if they lost, capture was a very real possibility. But so far, their true identities had never been exposed. Perhaps there had been some close calls, but at the very least, none of the men here knew of any.
"Everyone, weapons ready?"
All present nodded at the leader's words, daggers gripped in hand.
After confirming this, the leader cast a glance at one of his companions as a final precaution.
"One last check. Look through Bob's eyes. He's not still awake, is he?"
The man nodded and closed his eyes once more. A few seconds later, he opened them and shook his head.
"Bob is definitely asleep. He hasn't noticed the vision link between us, of course. Honestly, who would ever suspect someone else is seeing through their eyes?"
Everyone nodded in agreement. A shared vision link was, by any reasonable standard, impossible. Given that, there was almost no chance of it being detected. If Bob had sharp magical senses, perhaps he might notice something—but he was just a hunter with no magical talent. Moreover, this wasn't a spell or Skill cast by a human, so there was little need to worry about detection.
"Alright, let's move. Top priority: kill Bob. After that, if there's an opening, take the fairy's heart, then kill Crimson. But watch out for Crimson's Tamed Monster—that gryphon. They say it's an A-Rank monster, so we can't rule out the possibility it has power beyond our comprehension."
In reality, Seto was classified as a Rare Species of gryphon, recognized by the Guild as an S-Rank equivalent monster. But that information wasn't public, so the men naturally assumed it was merely A-Rank. Even so, an A-Rank monster alone would normally be enough to deter anyone from picking a fight.
Yet the men chose to disguise themselves as bandits, and they had a reason for it.
The leader produced a single candle from his pocket. It was a Magic Item that looked like nothing more than an ordinary candle. But as long as it was lit, it clouded the recognition of anyone nearby, making the group's presence harder to perceive. In the right hands, it was a dangerous tool.
It was precisely because they had this Magic Item that the men believed they could take on even Rei and Seto.
Even so, a recognition-blocking candle wasn't an invincible guarantee. With grim expressions, doing everything in their power to avoid being noticed, the group set off toward Rei's camp.