episode_0051

“Ooh~ Jazel! You’re finally up?”

As soon as I stepped into the garden, the Hero, who had been stretching his back while hoeing, noticed me and burst into his usual foolish, dim-witted laugh.

He vigorously waved his fleshy, calloused right hand from side to side, welcoming me as I walked towards the garden.

“It’s all thanks to you.”

I, too, lightly raised my right hand and waved it from side to side in response, as if returning his greeting.

The Hero approached me with a guileless, cheerful smile, his hoe, which he had been using to dig the ground, casually slung over his shoulder.

His right shoulder was still wrapped in a thick bandage, seemingly not yet healed from the arrow wound.

“How’s your body?”

At my question, tossed out as I gazed at the Hero’s shoulder, he still gave a foolishly gentle smile and massaged his bandaged shoulder.

“I’m fine, I’m fine! A wound like this will heal quickly!”

When I heard he’d asked Killua to be a model for a painting, I thought he had some ulterior motive again.

But seeing his still foolishly good-natured face, it felt like he had genuinely asked Killua purely for the sake of the painting.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

In response to my question, stemming from a simple desire to move my body, the Hero looked at the lumberjack’s axe I was holding.

“There is! There are a few logs to chop for firewood!”

The Hero pointed to a pile of lumber stacked next to his house.

It seemed he had cut all the trees around his house by hand and stacked them, as the logs in the pile were of various sizes with rough cut surfaces.

“They’re stacked incredibly haphazardly…”

Lumber cut cleanly to a uniform size was easy to process.

However, rough lumber like what the Hero had piled up, with inconsistent sizes and even twisted cut surfaces, was not easy to process by hand, requiring multiple axe swings.

“Eheheheng… Anyway, when I lived alone, I only chopped little by little, just enough for what I needed.”

The Hero, perhaps knowing this fact very well, let out an apologetic laugh and scratched the back of his head.

“Well… it’ll be perfect for some exercise.”

After all, it was simply an act of moving my body for exercise, not for living or survival.

There was no need to rush unnecessarily or stress about completing a large amount, so I moved to walk towards the lumber pile without much burden, the axe slung over my shoulder.

“Huh?”

At that moment. The Hero let out a foolish gasp and stared somewhere.

“What is it?”

Had he sensed someone’s presence?

Feeling nothing, I tilted my head and turned my gaze towards where the Hero was gasping and staring.

From where the Hero was looking, a figure was slowly walking towards us, rustling roughly through the bushes, seemingly with no intention of hiding its presence.

The figure was cloaked in a red robe with a deeply pulled-down hood obscuring its face, and in its right hand, it brazenly drew up magic, creating a small, flickering fireball.

“What is it? Who is that person?!”

I didn’t know who they were, but the fact that they were approaching us with a threatening fireball in their hand wasn’t something I could take lightly.

I hastily gripped the axe I had slung over my shoulder with both hands and glared at the red-robed figure slowly walking towards us.

“Catch~”

The robed figure, with a voice as soft as a woman’s, threw the clumped red fireball high towards us as if tossing a gift.

Staring at the fireball that had been thrown high into the sky, slowly descending in a gentle arc, I drew up magic in my right hand.

“Magic Bullet!”

Thanks to my regular shooting practice, it was not difficult to strike the slowly falling fireball, which was drawing a gentle arc in the air, with a Magic Bullet.

Boom!

The pure magic mass created at my fingertip collided with the magic construct shaped like fire, causing a small explosion and collapsing the very form of the fire-shaped magic construct.

As the fire-shaped construct disintegrated from the impact of the pure magic, the flickering fireball instantly lost its heat and scattered into dust in the air, vanishing like a mirage.

“Wow~ As expected, it’s pure magic!”

As the fireball she had created vanished into nothingness, the red-robed figure clapped her hands together joyfully, as if she had expected it.

However, unlike her joyous reaction, I silently kept my axe blade pointed at the woman who had thrown the fireball at us, carefully watching her actions.

“You don’t have to be so wary! It was just a welcoming gesture, thrown to confirm something.”

The woman in the red robe slowly approached, spreading her arms out to the sides as if to show she had no hostile intent towards us.

However, since mages could create lightning or flames in the blink of an eye, I did not lower my guard around her.

“What country’s etiquette is it, exactly, to throw a fireball as a welcoming greeting?”

“Ahahaha. It was just a very simple and safe test to confirm my benefactor.”

Letting out a small laugh, the red-robed woman slowly pulled back the hood she had worn deeply to obscure her face.

“Back then, I couldn’t see.”

As the hood of her robe was pulled back, slightly wavy, vermilion-colored hair cascaded down.

Staring at me with eyes sparkling like small rubies, she gave a faint smile that seemed to hold both welcome and a hint of shyness. She was a woman quite familiar to my eyes.

“Ariel?”

She was none other than Rai’s fiancée, the woman who had been trapped by the giant slime. It was Ariel.

“Trapped by the slime, my body was in a half-dead, suspended state, so I could only feel the flow of magic. Thanks to that, I couldn’t even see the face of my benefactor who saved me.”

Unable to hide the overwhelming welcome filling her chest, she spoke with a bright, radiant smile that seemed to sparkle faintly.

“You’re even more handsome than I expected!”

At the sudden compliment about my appearance from her lips, I furrowed my brow, displaying my wariness towards her.

“Hehehehet… Thanks!”

However, the clueless Hero, thinking her compliment was directed at him, proudly scratched his belly and burst into a bright, innocent laugh.

“Oh… I truly have no ill will!”

As I did not lower my guard, she once again spread her arms out to her sides, indicating that she was unarmed.

However, still unable to release my wariness towards her, I calmly analyzed the flow of magic circulating around her.

She seemed to have no intention of concealing her magic flow, as the movement of magic swirling around her with a very gentle sensation was clearly visible.

If she had harbored hostility or killing intent towards us, a disharmony would have occurred in a part of her magic flow.

“Do you even know what Rai did to us?”

But she wasn’t the only danger.

The greatest danger was Rai himself. It was possible that the unseen fellow was targeting us with his devilishly accurate and keen archery skills right now.

Ariel, appearing before us now, could simply be bait to confirm the targets’ locations.

“……”

While remaining wary of her and Rai, who could be hidden anywhere, I glanced sideways at the Hero’s house.

Fortunately, thanks to the fireball Ariel had thrown, Killua also seemed to have noticed the situation outside from within.

As if preparing for the worst, she too was quietly hiding, sharply condensing her magic.

“Haa… As expected…”

At our wary behavior, Ariel sighed deeply as if she had expected it, and then impatiently thumped her chest.

“Rai… stop hiding and come out!!”

As if startled by her enraged shout, the bushes rustled loudly.

Soon after, a man presumed to be Rai, similar to her in that he had his body and face covered by a brown robe, slowly emerged, stumbling through the bushes.

“I came too late because I was trying to figure out the situation in various ways.”

Ariel, her brow deeply furrowed at Rai’s annoyingly slow, stumbling approach, turned to us and gave a bitter smile full of apology.

“We came here to offer our sincere apologies to our benefactors!”

Ariel offered her apology to us by pressing her hands together and bowing deeply at the waist.

“Is *that* the attire of someone who came to apologize?”

However, seeing Rai, cloaked in a deeply pulled-down hood that made his identity unrecognizable, I still couldn’t lower my guard.

However, Ariel, as if understanding my reaction, waited for the robed man presumed to be Rai to walk up beside her.

“Now… I don’t know if this will bring you comfort, but…”

“Ah… Ariel… Do you really have to do this?”

As Ariel approached the man presumed to be Rai, he mumbled in a bewildered voice and flinched.

“You brought this upon yourself, you idiot!!”

Thwack!

Ariel, contrary to the gentle demeanor she had shown us, let out a harsh expletive and violently struck the back of Rai’s head with her fist.

Rai, hit in the back of the head by Ariel, immediately hunched over and clamped his mouth shut.

At the bewildering sight of the two, I was speechless and could only stare blankly at them.

“Ta-da!”

Soon after, with a sound effect uttered from Ariel’s lips, she grabbed the robe Rai was wearing and forcibly pulled it off.

And at the sight of Rai revealed beneath the robe, I could only let out a blank, hollow laugh.

Rai was dressed in nothing but a single piece of underwear, barely covering his privates. But not only that, his face was swollen here and there from how much he had been beaten, and there were several pitifully large bumps on his head.

“Hehehehe… What a mess!”

The Hero accurately summed up his appearance in a single phrase.

“And just in case, I prepared this too!”

Ariel proudly pulled out a magic crystal.

It was a magic crystal for video recording, similar to one I’d seen from a merchant. And the video contained within that crystal was…

“It shows Rai ending up in this state.”

“My goodness…”

At the traitor’s wretched end, only a hollow exclamation escaped my lips.

“So, now, to resolve the conflict and misunderstanding, we’d like to talk together… Would that be alright?”

Ariel cautiously pointed towards the Hero’s house with a pleading expression, as if seeking our permission.

Killua, who had been quietly holding her breath in the Hero’s house, also seemed to grant them permission to visit, as the magic she had been condensing quietly subsided.

“Uh… well… alright.”

With Killua’s permission, and curious about Rai’s terrible appearance and the story behind it, I granted them permission to visit.