Ch.16Hero Party Adventures – Snow Mountain, Distress

“WHO THE HELL IS IT!!!!! WHICH FUCKING BASTARD DID THIS!!!!!!”

The roar echoed throughout the cave.

Given the location, the sound didn’t fade easily but reverberated, creating countless echoes.

The women’s quarters were supposed to be far away, yet how could the shouting sound so vivid, as if it were right next to me?

It was deeply saddening that I had become accustomed to this situation.

“Tsk. What’s all the commotion about this time?”

“Mister, is this the first time she’s acted like this?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Young people these days have no patience, just yelling and making noise… Back in my day, brats who threw tantrums like that would–“

“I should go check what’s happening.”

I quickly slipped away as the old man was about to enter his lecturing mode.

How did that old man become such an insufferable know-it-all?

The other dwarves had some know-it-all tendencies too, but theirs could somehow be romanticized as “craftsmanship spirit.”

But the old man was different.

Including everyone I’d met back on Earth, he ranked among the top five—no, top three—most insufferable know-it-alls.

If he weren’t so damn skilled, I would have cut him loose immediately.

That’s the annoying thing about talented know-it-alls.

“Fuck! Hey! It was you! You ate it all!!!!”

“P-please calm down, Angelica… We don’t know for sure that Albus ate it…”

“Hey! Want to keep talking bullshit?! That bastard has priors, don’t you get it?! Or did YOU eat it?”

“Oh come on… Albus, say something, it wasn’t you, right?”

“……..”

“See! He can’t speak because he’s guilty!”

“……..What if I did eat it?”

“…You want to die, you piece of shit?”

“Whoa!! Angelica! P-put down that staff!!”

What a mess.

In a corner of the cave, Angelica, Eila, and Albus were raising their voices at each other.

“What’s going on now? We can hear you all the way from our area.”

“Oh, Hero! Please stop these two…”

Eila ran to me like a puppy spotting its owner the moment she saw me.

It was cute.

Not that I could tell her that.

I turned my head slightly, afraid she might notice my blushing face, and asked:

“What happened?”

“Angelica says her chocolate that she was saving disappeared…”

“Ah, I see.”

Turning my gaze from Eila, I saw the two people emanating a hostile atmosphere.

A woman with sky-blue long hair that seemed to capture the heavens themselves, with streaks of white mixed in.

This was Angelica, our party’s grand mage. I’ve forgotten her surname.

Judging by her gentle appearance and ethereal aura alone, she seemed even more saintly than Eila, but—

“Does this dickhead really want to die? I might have overlooked it once as a mistake, but I can’t forgive it twice.”

She’s also our party’s most foul-mouthed member.

With the nastiest temper too.

Her appearance and personality don’t match at all.

What’s wrong with Kurtz’s head for chasing after her?

“……I didn’t eat it.”

And standing opposite her was the silver-haired sword master, Albus Rubelion.

He seems taciturn and cool, but in reality, he’s just socially inept.

Damn, during meals when we’re all talking, he’d eat all the meat by himself and then say:

‘Uh… weren’t you all done eating since you were just chatting?’

That’s how clueless he is.

Or rather, how socially deficient…

Come to think of it, our party doesn’t seem to have any normal people except for me and Eila.

The know-it-all dwarf warrior.

The elf archer who’s a master of lewd jokes.

The psycho grand mage.

The grand sage who follows that psycho mage around.

The my-way-or-the-highway sword master.

They say in any group of five people, one is bound to be trash, but does that mean in a group of seven, only two can be normal?

And those two normal ones are me and Eila.

Well, fuck.

I need to recruit at least one more normal person at the next village.

But first, I should probably stop those two.

“Then die.”

“…I won’t just stand here and take it.”

“Want to fight? In this cramped space, I’d like to see you swing that long sword of yours–“

“Both of you, stop it.”

“……Hero.”

Both of them turned their attention to me.

“You know we shouldn’t fight among ourselves… We’re already isolated because of the avalanche, how is this helping?”

“No, fuck that! This dickhead ate all my chocolate!”

“…Is that chocolate really that delicious?”

“You son of a bitch…!”

“Both of you, calm down. And Albus, don’t say anything.”

“……”

Albus nodded.

I sighed.

“Angelica, the chocolate you’re talking about—is it the one in red wrapping with a gold ribbon? The one you bought in the last city we stayed in?”

“…Hey, how do you know that? Was it you? Did you eat it?”

“I saw you put it in Kurtz’s bag.”

“……”

“……”

“……”

“…Really?”

Silence fell.

From me, from Eila, briefly from Angelica, and as always from Albus.

Angelica loves sweets.

She’s the type who sprinkles sugar on her food the way others sprinkle salt, so of course she’d be furious if the chocolate she was saving disappeared.

I understand.

I understand, but…

“Isn’t it wrong to forget what you did and blame others?”

Angelica trembled.

Then she said:

“…Do you have proof?”

“What?”

“I said, do you have proof! Do you have evidence that I entrusted my chocolate to that sucker?!”

My goodness, the burden of proof seems to work differently in this world.

But then again, was there any evidence that Albus ate the chocolate?

The world sure works in mysterious ways.

“Well, we can check Kurtz’s bag later–“

“He’s stranded with that whore right now! It’ll take at least three days before we meet up again. Are you telling me to wait until then?!”

“Um, Angelica, even if we’re comrades, calling her a whore is a bit…”

“Fuck! What else do you call a whore but a whore? Are you defending that cum-brained bitch?”

“Hey, hey. Calm down… Angelica, do you have any evidence that Albus ate your chocolate?”

“That bastard ate all my candy last time too! He’s a repeat offender!!”

The meaning of “repeat offender” in this world must be different from what I know.

Even after three years, I still don’t quite get it.

Ah, I want to go home…

I miss my family and friends…

“So it’s just suspicion. Let’s do this: when we meet up with Kurtz and Pinel later, we’ll check the bag. If the chocolate is there, let’s just move on.”

“And if it’s not?”

“What?”

“What if it’s not there?!! How will you compensate for my missing chocolate and wasted time?!”

This is driving me crazy.

This is a grand mage?

“Then I’ll buy you a new one, okay?”

“That’s not good enough! That chocolate is only sold in Eirad! It’s so delicate and refined that it melts during even brief transport, so you can only buy it directly from the factory!!!”

“…Hey, wouldn’t it have melted on the way here then?”

“Of course I preserved it with magic.”

“…What kind of magic?”

“Time Freeze.”

“…Are you serious?”

Isn’t that magic that stops an object’s time?

Wouldn’t that consume an enormous amount of magical power?

Don’t tell me the reason she didn’t notice the avalanche was…

No, it couldn’t be, right?

Did she really miss detecting the avalanche because she was using near-grand magic to preserve chocolate?

If that’s true, she must be the Demon Lord’s spy.

“Wait. I’m the victim here! Why am I being treated like the perpetrator?!”

“Have you ever heard of the term ‘victim turned perpetrator’?”

“Why the fuck am I the perpetrator?!!”

Angelica stomped her foot in indignation.

Looking at just that scene, it might seem cute, but knowing the context made it repulsive.

Ah, Mr. Charlie Chaplin… you were right…

Tragedy up close is truly tragic.

If Shakespeare had witnessed this tragedy, he might have realized his own inadequacy and given up writing…

“H-Hero, snap out of it…”

“Ah.”

I must have momentarily lost my mind.

Judging by the strange nonsense I was spouting.

But it couldn’t be helped.

Anyone’s head would spin seeing such a spectacle.

“Hey, Albus.”

“……”

“Did you eat it?”

“……”

“What are you doing?”

In response to my question, Albus silently crouched down.

Then he began writing something on the ground.

Curious about what he was writing, I looked down.

-I didn’t eat it.

This short message was written there.

I was dumbfounded.

“…Have you seen the chocolate then?”

Next to the previous “I didn’t eat it,” another message appeared.

-Don’t know.

“Just fucking speak.”

“Hero?”

I slipped up.

I got angry without realizing it…

I was trying to use proper language in front of Eila.

Too embarrassed to look at Eila, I stared at the ground.

I saw more writing.

-You told me not to speak, so I’m communicating through writing…

This is driving me insane.

Are these people actually the Demon Lord’s subordinates?

Their mental attack capabilities are too impressive.

“Ah, Angelica, please calm down…”

“Hey! Are you ignoring me, you bastards?!”

-So can I speak now?

“Are you fucking ignoring me?!!!”

-Can I speak?

These crazy bastards.

Should I just run away with Eila?

No, Eila wouldn’t allow that.

If she would have, we’d have escaped long ago.

We need at least one more normal person.

Angelica and Pinel don’t get along, Kurtz takes Angelica’s side no matter what, and the old man and Albus are champions at making situations worse.

Eila and I alone can’t break this cycle of madness.

I’m going to lose my mind…

“Why are you all so noisy!!”

Fuck.

Another one joins.

This isn’t the kind of service I wanted…

“What’s all this racket about?”

“Ah, Great Warrior, well… Angelica’s chocolate disappeared…”

“Chocolate? That unnecessarily sweet confection? Tsk. You’re causing all this commotion over something like that?”

“S-something like that…?”

Oh, this is going to be bad.

I’m staying out of it; let the three of them sort it out.

“It’s because you eat nothing but sweets that your temper’s so foul! Back in my day, we couldn’t even dream of such sugary foods!”

“The saying ‘age doesn’t guarantee wisdom’ exists for a reason. How do you manage to spew shit every time you open your mouth? Must be nice being old—looking forward to dying soon?”

Whoever said watching fights is fun, I’d like to find them and kill them.

“Eila, let’s go inside.”

“Huh? But what about those three…?”

“I don’t know, they’ll stop when they get hungry. Let’s just rest comfortably…”

I hope they stop fighting soon.

“Um, those three are blocking the entrance to the cave we’re in right now…”

“Ah, you’re right. What should we do then…”

“…Where was your room, Hero?”

“…Over there.”

“It’s just until the fight is over. Understood?”

“…Understood.”

Well, maybe their continued fighting isn’t so bad after all…

And so, Eila and I spent time in the narrow cave until the fight ended.

It was wholesome.

Nothing inappropriate happened at all.

For the record, the chocolate was indeed in Kurtz’s bag.