| Author: Ash | Original Source: Syosetu | Word Count: 2998 characters |
| Translator: Mii | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 1262 words |
Good day! This is Ren.
It’s been around ten days since we left the royal capital, but we hadn’t arrived in the next town yet.
We were currently staying at a random campsite for a few days. If I remember right, it would take another four days to go to Mubarro from here. It’s actually not that far away.
Hey, we weren’t rushing at all, so let’s go slowly! Unlike when we came to the royal capital, I moved lazily at the same speed as the caravans of other merchants. As for our movement speed itself, I went together with a group of caravans when going to O’Neill in the winter before, so I got this. There’s no problem.
Then if you’re asking what we were doing in this kind of place, then I can answer that we were preparing many things… Well, you could say that we were training. Myself included.
Our original plan was to stay in a village on the way and take on requests when needed, but there were quite a lot of merchants coming and going to the villages near the royal capital. With many adventurers, too.
Even if we had many things to prepare, I didn’t enjoy being seen by so many people. Hearing that, Arisa came up with the crazy idea of staying in a random campsite for a while… And the thoughtless me also agreed with it, so we decided on the majority vote and put it into practice.
That being said, spending many days in a campsite on a large hillside road would make us stand out. Instead of actually using the campsite, we were camping a little deeper in the forest near the campsite.
Specifically, I stored the trees into my [Storage] to make a small vacant lot. Then I used earth magic to make a simple house next to the carriage.
It was a simple one, so I didn’t put too much thought when making it. We used the simple bed in the carriage as it was. The golem horse didn’t need this, but I made some kind of tent to cover them. That could also serve as an excuse when someone saw us.
The floor plan was a living room with a corridor to the carriage instead of the bedroom. The toilet was at the left end of the corridor. The doorway to the stable was right next to the toilet. There were tables and chairs for meals in the living room, and benches to relax at the corner of the room. Also, you could also go to the kitchen and the bathroom from the living room. Since I could go out directly from the living room this way, I also made an entrance door just to be safe.
It’s quicker if I took out my house, but having a house of that size suddenly appear would cause a ruckus. That’s why we settled down like this.
Eh? It still stands out? Well, you’re right… But renting a house in a village and doing my preparations there would make me stand out even more, so I had no other choice than doing this… I guess I also choose this after considering my comfort as well.
I said we were preparing a lot of things, but it was mostly mastering our party cooperation and making new equipment.
First, the party cooperation. This was actually the biggest problem… To be honest, the difference in fighting ability between Lily and Arisa with Norn and I was… too different.
Let’s look at Lily and Arisa first. The cooperation between them was perfect.
Arisa’s strong forte was competing with speed, but she was also skilled with swordsmanship, so her blows weren’t light at all. She could easily decapitate an orc’s fat neck.
Behind her, Lily secured her safety with barrier magic and supported Arisa with attack magic and auxiliary magic. Both of them seemed to be the cautious type of adventurers, prioritizing their safety above all. Their policy was not to overdo it. That’s great.
Then, let’s go to Norn, Bell, and I.
I was completely a rearguard1. What I usually did was put Norn and Bell in the vanguard and make a long-range attack after taking a distance behind them. It’s possible to carry out mobile combat by riding on Norn just like when I was fighting the giant, but I would only do it when it was an emergency. To tell you the truth, participating in a battle was too much for me, so I didn’t really want to do it.
Well, our fighting styles were basically the same, but our annihilation power was different.
We once tried to show each other our battle against random monsters, but… if we fought together, the monsters would be annihilated by Norn, Bell, and me. Lily and Arisa wouldn’t get any experience out of it.
We decided that Arisa and Bell would be the vanguard. Lily was in the rearguard. Further back was me as a backup and Norn as my escort. Since that’s how it went, Lily, Norn, and Bell trained cooperating with each other.
The reason I didn’t train? That was because of my low self-defense ability. Norn became my escort to make up for that, but I didn’t want to be in danger during training. That’s why I was absent.
I made an excuse that Norn had to move around to follow up during the training, which would leave me having no defense. The truth was, Norn hated putting me in danger.
Norn’s overprotection had increased since that incident… What the heck happened to Norn’s title, it changed to ‘Ren’s Guardian.’ I was happy and thankful, but also felt a bit complicated.
Also, there were a few other reasons… First, we were at a party, but also not. I think calling us a clan was more suitable.
Clan was a large-scale party where multiple parties gathered2.
A typical adventurer’s party usually comprised four to six people on average, up to eight at most.
However, the larger the number of people, the more different the field of expertise would be. The advantage was we could adapt to various situations. Having over ten people move together would make things complicated, the operation would change. Usually, clans like that would group teams according to the request, and some members could take a rest when the clan was taking a request they weren’t good at.
Well, there were cases where a party with around six to eight people had to work separately according to the request, but with many people, it would be better to register as a clan than becoming one party.
That way, the guild would have it easier in managing various difficult special requests, large subjugation, mediation of such jobs, and more. That’s what Lily heard from her older sister, who was a guild staff.
Lily also learned a trick from Salena. That becoming a clan might be a method to deceive our rank and age difference during registration.
In our case, the rank difference between Lily and I mattered little, but my age was less than thirteen years old. That’s why we couldn’t take subjugation requests if I joined a party.
However, we weren’t forming a party of three people, but a clan with three people; me as a solo, Lily and Arisa as a pair. That way, they could take subjugation requests.
Apparently, when some parties have differences in rank between the members or unable to take requests because of age restrictions, they will take this method. It’s not very common, though.
