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In the end, nothing happened that evening and we uneventfully welcomed the morning sun. It looks like it’s still not the time for the various magic tools to come to light. While preparing breakfast, I asked Urania to collect the tools.

The truth is, though I was the one that made the magic tools, Urania was the one who set them up. That’s natural, since even though I may be capable of creating things, it doesn’t mean that I can fully utilize them. After all, I was a shut-in in my previous life and my only household security was a self-lock apartment, so I don’t even know how to setup a detector.

In that sense, Urania is an expert. Just being able to detect monsters and herbs by scent won’t make you a scout. Before partying with me, Urania mostly avoided confrontation with monsters resulting in her minor inexperience with battles, but on the other hand, she developed her ability to discover paths unused by monsters, harvesting locations unknown to other adventurers, and naturally, setting up traps.

Her scouting ability was enough to amaze the C-Rankers “Grim” and “Fyne” during our previous campaign. It was praised and relied upon. I was even shocked to hear that, while we were climbing the sacred mountain, Urania played a great role in finding and subjugating monsters.

That Uraina set my magic tools at places where she thinks “I’ll probably go in from here” or ”It’ll be a problem if there was a trap here”. Naturally, it’s the places where you won’t notice at first glance so if I collected them, I’ll probably accidentally trip them up. Because of that, I can only ask Urania to get them back.

「Nn, I finished getting them.」
「Thank you. I’m done making breakfast.」
「Ah, sunny side up.」
「You like them right? It’s a perfect sunny side up.」
「I love it!」

Matching with Uraina’s taste, breakfast is corn soup and sunny side up, along with white bread. I tried to make a soft yolk sunny side up once and Urania got addicted to it. It was hard to find eggs that are safe to eat half-cooked, but we managed to buy directly from a poultry farm through “Gray Cat Inn’s” connections.

Naturally, I keep it in my [Dream Storage], so we always have a stock of fresh eggs to eat. In situations like these, the ability of [Dream Storage] to optionally preserve an item’s state is extremely convenient.

By the way, Gerald doesn’t come at breakfast. He doesn’t eat breakfast and seems to sleep as much as he can, jumping into the carriage just moments before departure. Yesterday, he didn’t wake up even after departure time so we almost left him, but he recklessly outran the running carriage and jumped in.

「Still, another whole day of carriage travel, huh… 」
「Nn, about that, I thought a little.」
「Oh? Do you have a good idea?」
「If you float a bit with “Levitation”, can’t it lessen the vibration?」
「Ahh~ That, huh~」

I’ve already thought of Urania’s plan before. “Levitation” is a magic for floating and its major principle is to make the target’s weight lighter than air, making floating in the air possible. Naturally, if I just float a little, no matter how much the carriage rock I won’t be affected by it.

However, floating in a carriage by myself will be quite eye-catching. If I adjust it a little, I can make it so I just float enough to have it look like I’m just sitting down too. But doing this would make the carriage’s shaking affect me even more. Specifically, if the carriage jumps just a bit my head would smash the ceiling.

「With that, I have no choice but to endure it.」
「It just won’t go as planned.」
「This time, we can’t really help it. Well, I’ll just use healing magic and bear it.」

The carriage departed as scheduled. Gerald also jumped in barely in time as expected and is right now eating dried meat still with bed hair.

It’s a bit painful for me, but traveling in a carriage is really relaxing. Because glass is both expensive and very likely to break if monsters attack the carriage, the window is just open. Still, there is a leather cover to protect the passengers for when it rains or for when monsters and bandits attack us.

And so the carriage departed as scheduled but just when we were about to have noon break, the carriage suddenly stopped. Seeing how the other passengers immediately closed their leather window covers, I was just amazed by how strangely accustomed to it they are.

「Hey, is this that?」
「Well, nine out of ten chances of it being an attack. I don’t know if it’s monsters or bandits though.」
「Nn, it doesn’t smell like monsters. Probably bandits.」
「Oh, you’re right. The numbers… ugh, there’s more than a dozen of them.」

After hearing Urania’s words, I feel out their life energy. Certainly, there seem to be ten-odd men blocking our carriage’s path. Even though we do have mercenaries with us, they’re just six of them and they’re only about D ~ E Rank in strength. I don’t know how strong the bandits are but humans aren’t really different strength-wise even at A Rank.

An adventurer’s Rank is also based on strength, but the most important criteria are their experience and ability to survive. It’s said that an excellent adventurer is someone that can return from any request and, even with failure, they will always bring information home. Rather than the ability to finish any request, reliably earning information to complete the request is more important.

Well, what I want to say it that no matter how much experience an adventurer and mercenary has, they can’t win against numbers. It’s one of the main reasons why a goblin’s subjugation rank increases when they swarm. While it’s true that the increased intellect, use of tools and cooperation is a threat, but just the pure number of them is a problem in itself.

That’s why if we just stand here and watch, the hired mercenaries would probably be annihilated. Especially since, even though we’re not really close, we were acquainted during the breaks on this trip. I can’t really bear to just sit and see them get killed.

「I’m not really excited to do this, since it feels like I’m taking their job, though.」
「Oioioi, what do you mean about that!? Don’t tell me you’re going outside!?」

As I was about to get out, Gerald stops me. Still, I’d like to avoid wasting time and risk the chance of me being too late.

「Sorry, I don’t have time to talk.」

And since Gerald is blocking the exit, I jumped from the leather-covered window. Though “Levitation” magic did make it easy for me to jump out, I was probably only able to accomplish this feat with this petite body.

Well now, this does feel very familiar, but let’s make sure that the mercenaries I’m about to help don’t attack me by mistake.

「I shall assist!!」