Chapter 214: 114. A Minor Connection -1 (Part One)
**
Inside the forest of demonic beasts.
Alice, while currently kitted out in an easy-to-move Priestess uniform, was quickly dashing through the forest.
She smacked away the tree branches in her way with her gauntlet-equipped hands and nimbly darted over the thick tree roots below.
She glanced to her side and that’s when ‘something’ appeared right next to her side.
-Ku-aaahk!
This thing, a monster, had green skin and tusk-like fangs that jutted out sharply from an ugly, scary-looking face. Its body was also far more muscular than any human out there.
It was an Orc.
There wasn’t just one Orc either, but many of them; they wore worn-down armour and each of them brandished a variety of bladed weapons like swords, spears, and axes.
Alice tutted inwardly at that. These Orcs were faster than she had anticipated.
She shifted her gaze back to her front only to gasp and flinch in surprise. She then hurriedly ducked her head lower.
A sword sliced through the air and missed her hair by nary a gap to spare.
More swords and spears flew in from seemingly everywhere. While holding her dancing hair, Alice expertly and easily dodged all the incoming attacks.
“J-just a little bit further.”
She was thinking deeply to herself.
‘The location Mister Hans told me about…’
She could sense a lot of presences coming after her from some place behind her.
A large horde of Orcs were trying to pounce on her position. They numbered around a hundred.
And then, one crimson-coloured Ogre was also approaching her position while crushing past the forest’s vegetation. It had two heads and it seemed to be at least one and a half times bigger than regular Ogres.
“There’s even an Ogre here?”
Her eyes widened from surprise, since there had been no mention of an Ogre being in this area in the adventurer request she and her companions had accepted.
The red-skinned Two Headed Ogre began to indiscriminately swing a huge tree trunk held in its grasp as if it was merely a wooden stick. The Orcs running in front of it got crushed into meat paste.
More Orcs fired arrows, hoping to kill Alice that way, but she nimbly dashed and weaved among the trees to evade the projectiles.
Not too long after that, she escaped from the confines of the forest and went into the wide-open grasslands.
In front of her was Hans wearing a robe and waving a burning torch from left to right.
Alice spotted a large patch of dirt on top of the grasslands before him that seemed artificially covered up. She leapt over it and landed next to Hans before quickly taking a look behind her.
-Ku-aaaahk!
-Human meat!
The horde of Orcs and their bloodshot eyes angrily rushed across the patch of dirt. And right at that moment, the bamboo sticks acting as the dirt’s foundation quaked unsteadily and completely gave away.
The ground caved in and both the horde of Orcs and the red-skinned Ogre fell into the trap.
The Orcs painfully tumbled down to the bottom, then began sniffing the mud coating their bodies. Along with the acrid metallic stench, some kind of viscous liquid was mixed in with the dirt.
Wasn’t this… oil?
The Orcs’ complexions paled instantly.
They began flailing about, trying to escape from the trap. But right at that moment, Hans tossed the lit torch in his hand.
In almost an instant, the flames spread out inside the trap.
One hundred or so Orcs were burned to death as tragic screams left their mouths.
They had completely fallen for the trap.
Hans and Alice exchanged glances with each other and began sighing in relief, only for the red-skinned Ogre to jump out of the hole in the ground right at that moment. Its whole body was coated in oil and flames were burning on it, yet it was still alive.
This mutated Ogre, the Two Headed Ogre, opened both of its mouths and began roaring out in anger.
-Humans, we hate! We hate you magicians, using us in experiments…!
But right at that moment, a ‘Paladin’ kitted out in silver-white armour strode out from the forest. He was wielding a two metre-long greatsword in both of his hands.
That weapon was none other than the treasured sword that the former inheritor of the sword king title used to wield.
The ‘Paladin’ gripped the huge sword tightly and softly whispered under his helm, “Kasim.”
When he did, a transparent mass of divinity suddenly gathered behind him. It morphed into a soul of a hulking human being.
It was a holy ghost.
This ‘creature’ entered the greatsword.
[Divine Aura has been activated. The equipment will be temporarily upgraded.]
[A skill has been added. ‘Divine Aura of Wind’ has been generated.]
The Paladin’s two-handed grip on the sword became stronger.
This was kind of like ‘possession’ – the holy ghost entered and took possession of the weapon itself. Although the overall power output would only be one-tenth of when the undead was directly summoned to the living world, this much was still acceptable in this situation.
He then cocked the greatsword back before thrusting it forward to where it used to be a second ago.
BOOM-!
The wind condensed before exploding forward. The air turned into storm currents, and formless blades flew out to split apart the burning Two Headed Ogre’s back hide.
-Kuwaaaaahk!
Blood spewed out like a gory fountain. The huge monster with two heads faltered and collapsed on its faces. It reached out with its hand, hoping to somehow save itself, but then, the Paladin grabbed that hand and looked coldly at the monster.
“With this, our current job is complete.”
His greatsword lifted up high in the air, and then slammed down to sever the Ogre’s finger.
**
There was this one individual that had become the talk of the adventurer’s guild recently; the Paladin in the silver-white armour.
A ruined noble from the kingdom of Lome, who also happened to be a holy knight that followed the teachings of the gods.
In other words, this hot topic was none other than Allen Rufus and his two companions.
The receptionist of the guild that served both the adventurers and mercenaries was currently staring agog at the huge ‘finger’ left behind by the trio.
“This is what the pinky finger of the Two Headed Ogre looks like?”
“Holy sh*t! It’s the size of my thigh.”
“Isn’t this weird? He took the job of hunting down some Orcs, so why did he hunt down a Two Headed Ogre instead?”
The contents of the request was definitely about hunting down a horde of Orcs that had been raiding rural villages and abducting the villagers living there. And yet, this trio went and hunted down a Two Headed Ogre along the way.
Was that all?
Previously, when they took on a job to clean out a swamp occupied by a group of Lizardmen, they somehow ended up hunting down a mutated five-headed Hydra.
And there was the incident with the Ratmen that happened about a month ago as well. As it turned out, a humongous Ratman Queen had been leading those monsters. Yet, not only did the Paladin and his group hunt all those critters down, they even proceeded to clean out the sewers to such an extent that the whole underground waterways had become completely purified.
“Incidents seem to be increasing in numbers lately for some reason.”
The receptionist failed to hide his feeling of inexplicable helplessness.
Even though the jobs the Paladin took on were supposed to be minor things, they still seemed to spiral out of control, only for him to find a way to sort them out with no problem in the end.
It wasn’t any different this time as well.
A job to hunt down some Orcs ballooned into a much bigger hunt of a mutated Two Headed Ogre.
With things like this, it was inevitable that all sorts of rumours about them would start propagating.
One of them was the rumour of the trio faking the various incidents.
“It’s way too weird, isn’t it? No matter what, they must’ve faked this whole thing.”
“That’s right, it couldn’t have been done with his real ability. And he must’ve dumped a crap ton of holy water in the sewers.”
In other words, other people began suspecting that the trio had faked the incidents to earn fame as newbie adventurers.
However, who in their right mind would ‘add’ a Two Headed Ogre in their Orc hunting request? Or for that matter, who would be insane enough to come up with the idea of ‘adding’ a Hydra in their Lizardmen hunting request?
Most of all, no one in this world would be crazy enough to dump enough holy water just to temporarily purify the sewerage system serving hundreds of thousands of oblivious citizens.
Simply put, this rumour was just some nonsense spewed out by jealous adventurers, that’s all.
However, another rumour suggested that the Paladin must’ve been a member of a royal family of some kingdom somewhere.
“They could be from the royal family of some kingdom, you know? The girl’s a princess, the Paladin is her escorting knight, and the peddler is actually her attendant.”
That explanation sounded the most plausible of them all.
“The adventurer named Alice is actually a princess from a forgotten kingdom, while the Paladin used to be a royal guard. As for the peddler, he was a chamberlain.”
Of course, there was no basis for this assumption.
The receptionist of the adventurer guild could only make a troubled expression while eavesdropping on the murmurs of others.
The trio was the very first group of individuals to rise from Wood-rank to Eltera, a rank which only one thousand people in the whole continent were rumoured to possess, in only around a month. This was indeed far too unprecedented.
The receptionist ended up racking his brain trying to figure out how he should go about treating the Paladin in silver-white armour and his two companions in the future.
While he was groaning to himself, someone walked over to the receptionist.
It was a muscular man kitted out in armour, an adventurer named ‘Adolf’.
“Oh! Mister Adolf.”
The receptionist waved his hand. Adolf reciprocated the greeting before shifting his curious gaze over to the finger that used to belong to the Two Headed Ogre.
The receptionist smiled wryly and explained, “Oh, this thing? Eltera-ranked adventurers left it here. Eeeya~, it feels like the world is getting more scary, isn’t it? Damn rats were teeming in the sewers not too long ago, a bunch of Orcs were going on a rampage, and even some Lizardmen tried to attack the fiefdom not too long ago. What’s going on here, I wonder?”
Adolf rubbed his chin while listening to the receptionist.
The latter was right. The areas near the fiefdom seemed to be rather unsettled these days for some reason.
But the overall number of casualties wasn’t that high considering the types of commotions being raised. It wouldn’t have been strange to see hundreds of adventurers and mercenaries lose their lives during these events.
It was all thanks to the Paladin in silver-white armour stepping forward.
Adolf had come across quite a few tales happening within and around the fiefdom, so he asked the receptionist about something he felt curious of. “Just when did the monsters start acting up like this?”
“Ng? Ah, I guess everything started about a month ago? Well, the Ratmen incident did show some signs of trouble a month before that, but the things happening back then were too minor to draw much attention.”
Adolf nodded slowly at the explanation.
So, then, the monsters grew more active and threatening after the silver-white Paladin arrived in the city. The timing seemed way too convenient to explain as pure coincidence.
Adolf muttered, “I see. Something is indeed happening in this place. And that’s why he decided to come here.”
“Something is happening here? And who’s he?”
“Do you know where I can find that adventurer right now?”
While asking the receptionist, Adolf grasped the sheepskin parchment in his hand. It was a letter sent to him from the royal court of Aihrance.
They were asking him to have a face-to-face chat with this Eltera-rank adventurer.
