Ch.10A New Morning

“…Huh?”

I opened my eyes with a peculiar sensation—neither the natural feeling of waking up on my own nor the irritation of being forcibly roused while still sleepy. My eyes snapped open as if I were some android with a preset timer. This must be the effect of the awakening magic Jessica had mentioned.

‘Indeed… with this, I could definitely wake up and respond if an intruder approached in the middle of the night.’

I put on the socks and leather vest I had left beside my bag and exited the tent to find that the sun had just risen. The magical pattern in the center of the campfire hadn’t disappeared yet, but unlike last night when it burned steadily like a candle flame, it now flickered like an ordinary fire, causing the magical pattern to waver as well. It was clearly reaching the end of its effective duration.

*Rustle…*

“Good morning. That awakening magic is amazing…”

“…Huh?!”

Hearing rustling sounds from Jessica’s tent, I turned around to greet her, assuming she was coming out—only to freeze in shock at the unexpected sight. Jessica was indeed emerging from her tent, but instead of yesterday’s corset dress, she wore only a bustier and panties. Even considering this was another world, she was unmistakably in her underwear.

“…Eek!”

After a moment of paralysis, Jessica realized the situation and dove back into her tent, pulling down the screen and hurriedly getting dressed with much rustling. I’d always had the preconception that women take a long time to get dressed, but wasn’t that speed just now faster than how quickly I dress?

“S-sorry… I just forgot because of my habit when traveling alone…”

“No, I should be the one apologizing. I’m the one who benefited here.”

If my mental age matched my appearance, I might have been flustered at the sight of a beautiful woman in her underwear, but since I’m actually a man in his mid-thirties inside, I’m not going to panic over seeing someone in their underwear. What? You’re saying my brain completely shut down the moment she came into view? Well, with visuals like that, who could blame me! Hahaha!

“…This is how you use it.”

“Oh, that’s convenient. *munch munch*…”

After the small incident, which we decided not to dwell on since it was an accident, we dismantled the tents and used water from our canteens to wet towels for washing our faces and brushing our teeth.

I had thought that with 19th-century technology, tube toothpaste wouldn’t be available and we might use salt instead, but the travel kit purchased in Mothertown included a set of 12 “pills that instantly turn water into mouthwash.” I hadn’t been able to tell her last night since I hurried to bed, but apparently if you hold it in your mouth for about 30 seconds before spitting it out, it cleans and disinfects your teeth all at once—seemingly superior to the toothpaste and mouthwash used in 21st century Earth.

After breakfast of bread and jerky, we packed up our belongings. Jessica, who had dismantled her tent more skillfully than I had mine, covered the campfire with dirt to extinguish it, then retrieved the black panther’s magic stone that had been buried within.

“Is it safe to hold that with your bare hands?”

“Magic stones don’t change temperature even if left in fire or ice. Once the magical energy is completely depleted and it turns gray, it loses its properties as a magic stone and would get hot, but by then it would quickly crumble to ash.”

“I see…”

Looking more closely after hearing this, I noticed that the magic stone—which had been a deep purple-black color until Jessica engraved the pattern on it last night—had turned a rough gray color around its top and bottom edges, about one-third of the whole. As Jessica had said last night, it would probably turn completely gray after being used about three times.

After putting the magic stone in her pouch, Jessica took out a hand mirror and lipstick from one side of it, skillfully applied it to her lips, and put it back. Though called lipstick, it looked more like a small crayon rather than the familiar sophisticated design with a rotating handle, giving it a modest appearance that hardly felt like cosmetics.

“Shall we get going?”

“Huh? Is that all for your makeup?”

“Yes. I don’t usually wear anything else.”

So that beauty is all natural except for the lip color. Come to think of it, for a veteran traveler who walks long distances and is familiar with handling a pistol for emergencies, she doesn’t have a single callus on her palms, and when I accidentally saw her in her underwear, I didn’t notice a single blemish on her skin. I’m not sure if it’s this other world that’s amazing or Jessica’s beauty, but it’s impressive either way.

The second day’s march was a bit more challenging than the first. Not because of monsters or such issues, but the difficulty of the walk itself. Unlike the relatively flat and open areas near Mothertown, the ground was uneven in many places, with trees sprouting sparsely throughout the landscape.

“I thought we’d left the forest behind and walked quite a distance, but we’re entering another forest.”

“It’s not completely open plains like around Mothertown. Mail coaches might take detours to avoid trees, but adventurers typically cut through unless the forest is exceptionally dense.”

“Aren’t there proper roads connecting the cities? That seems like it would be an important part of pioneering.”

“I heard they attempted a major road construction project after the first western city, Oxville, was completed… but the frequency of strong monsters appearing along the roads increased, especially aerial monsters attacking travelers, so they deemed it too dangerous and dismantled it.”

“Wow, that’s severe…”

So the monsters recognized the roads built for western pioneering as ‘human travel routes,’ with weaker creatures avoiding them while stronger ones used them as hunting grounds? If that’s the case, it might be a death route for merchants and ordinary travelers, even if adventurers confident in their shooting skills might manage.

“For that reason, the road improvement project is indefinitely frozen unless a method to protect the entire road with barriers is developed.”

“I can see why.”

Though I agreed with Jessica’s explanation, I vaguely had some potential solutions in mind.

If the problem is that people and carriages walking along roads become targets for dangerous monsters, especially aerial ones swooping down from above, wouldn’t a steel behemoth with speed and sturdiness that most monsters couldn’t challenge—namely, a railway system with train transport—be one answer? Given that Grantis already resembles Earth’s Wild West era, it wouldn’t be strange if something similar to railways were developed.

If no one has come up with such an idea, I could subtly use that knowledge to make a fortune or gain fame… the kind of “modern knowledge cheat” that often appears in isekai stories. I entertained such ambitions briefly.

“I guess getting used to rough terrain travel is the priority for now. Fortunately, these boots are quite comfortable to walk in—”

Just as I was about to comment on how surprisingly comfortable the boots felt, it happened.

A sensation like someone holding a gun to the back of my head, about to pull the trigger. Or like in robot anime when the protagonist senses an approaching crisis from an invisible direction with some inexplicable superpower.

I couldn’t identify what it was, but I clearly felt a deadly threat approaching from a specific direction. In what seemed like slow motion, I sensed death plunging down from the air behind me like a guillotine blade. There was no time to contemplate how or why I was experiencing this sensation. Instinctively, I shoved Jessica aside and used the momentum to throw myself in the opposite direction as a massive shadow swooped through the spot where I had just been standing, tracing an inverted parabola before soaring back up.

“What was that just now?!”

“…A Strike Falcon?!”

What’s with that cool fighter jet-like monster name? I thought briefly. Following Jessica’s gaze upward, I saw the silhouette of a bird of prey with wings spread wide. It was hard to judge the distance, but the body alone, excluding the wings, seemed about the size of an adult man.

“Is this one of those avian monsters we were just talking about?”

“It’s one of the most dangerous among avian types. One of the main culprits that derailed the road improvement project.”

“Speak of the devil… How strong is it?”

“…We can’t defeat it with just the two of us. Even before comparing strength, we have a bad matchup.”

If Jessica, who had calmly handled the fierce black panther, was making such a definitive statement, there must be something beyond mere combat power at play, making a reckless frontal assault unwise.

However, escaping the surveillance of a flying bird of prey wouldn’t be easy either. If we were in a dense forest, we might be able to use trees to hide from view, but the surrounding trees were coniferous and sparsely spaced, unlikely to conceal us from the bird’s excellent vision.

“I guess we have no choice but to fight back while retreating or look for a chance to counterattack…”

I swallowed hard, keeping watch for the Strike Falcon that could plunge down on our heads again at any moment.