How to Suck Honey at a Warrior’s Party

n the distance.
I took a deep breath, stepped into the Horn Mountains and realized that all I had done was cast a protective spell on my companions and provided five blankets.

This meant I wasn’t even doing my share.
It was too much to compare to the scattered heads of Herrin and Reg ahead of me.

Still, I figured I’d walk the rest of the way.

“Now that we’re here, shouldn’t we be okay?”

“No.
I won’t feel safe until I’m completely out of it.”

“But….”

The two people in front of me, who are less skilled, are doing just fine?

“Especially.
Cylon is still weak, so we have to be careful.”

Right?

The warrior, whose glow had gradually increased as we rode through the Horn Mountains, eyed me with a frightening glint.
Was it possible to kill with your eyes? It was a look that made me pause for a moment.

And the emphasis on ‘yet’ meant so much.

What if he was actually warning me that he could no longer be overlooked as the leader of the party? Should I have apologized and made a show of fighting long ago, was I too much of a bother!

In all seriousness, I was trying to recall my behavior in the Horn Mountains.

“Really, it would be… really, really sad to think of Cylon getting hurt.”

The warrior looked a little sad.
The rain-soaked beauty was powerful.
He looked one hundred per cent sincere.

Wow, how convincing!

I obediently let my doubts and worries fly.
You can’t do that! My good and true warrior, my sword-wielding warrior!

I smiled broadly and nodded.

All I did before I reached the village was to smile at Reg and Herrin, with whom I occasionally made eye contact.

“We’ll have to throw this quilt away.”

“We’ll have to, I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, we’ll just buy a new one.”

My colleagues apologized as they handed me back the cloth tied around my waist.

It was fine.
Every manor or lordship had a quilt shop.
If they didn’t have anything I liked, that was fine.
There were blankets to use until a new one could be found.

I destroyed five futons with a simple annihilation spell.

The warrior smiled broadly and clapped me on the back.

I flinched and hunched my shoulders.
Because of what had happened in the dungeon, I flinched whenever he praised me.
I was wary of appearing too competent.
Even though my brain told me there was no way he could have noticed, my body moved with a conditioned reflex.

He’s just a true leader who knows how to praise the little things.
I’m bad.

If he really thought I was competent, he would have let me walk on my own two feet in the Horn Mountains.

“Where is this place, anyway?”

Herrin asked, waving her hand in front of her.

The warrior thought for a moment, then quickly offered a name.

“I believe it is… Arandal Manor.”

“Arandal is the place on the border, right?”

“Yes.
Though it’s as big as two other manors combined, so I wouldn’t call it close to the border yet.”

Arandal was a place I’d heard of before, even as a hermit in the tower.
It was technically the northern edge of the empire, though it was called a border.
Above it was deserts, forests of ground spiders, and the wastelands where the demons were said to reside.
Arandal’s domain was just before the desert.

Until the rise of the demon, the deserts and wastelands, and the grubby forests that straddle them, were all unclaimed.
It was also a land that was far from everyone’s attention, except for the occasional news of a dungeon or ruin.

All three sections combined were quite large and no one, save a few tribes, thought to live there.

Thus, Arandal was a region of change, but not change, until the arrival of the Demon King.
The reason Arandal is famous was that there are more mines than “change.” It was said that 30 per cent of the jewelry on the continent came from Arandal.

A rich neighborhood?

I thought maybe I’d see a lot of strange things.
The richer a place is, the stranger things it produces.

The small town in front of me was no different.
All white houses, colorful gemstones on every roof.
They were decorated with a lot of glass, but it didn’t hide the gemstones in the middle.

If the village at the end of the estate was like this, the lodging would be good.
I was ready to go in and make myself comfortable.

But the warrior next to me, surveying the town with a serious face, muttered.

“This is strange.”

What?

I wanted to shut him up for making such an ominous comment.
I didn’t want him to use a fantasy novel cliché like ‘ominous’ or ‘strange’.

Alas… Arandal had already become ominous.
I say ‘already’ because he’s already noticed something odd, but as an avid fantasy reader in a previous life, it was him who pulled the trigger on a loaded gun.

He’s usually a good eye, but no matter how hard I bore down on him, he kept his gaze fixed on Arandal’s village.

“What’s wrong?”

Only after I asked the question did the warrior look back at his companions.
Herrin and Reg were looking at him curiously.

The warrior looked a little embarrassed and spoke cautiously.

“I’d have to look into it a bit more before I could say for sure.”