【The Story of the Red-Haired Hero】The Fortress City of Liheid

This arc is comedy-flavored all the way through.

I hope you'll read it casually.

“Uwaaaaaah!”

Beautiful moss-covered stone streets, numerous stalls and food stands lining the narrow alleys, and crowds of adventurers and merchants passing by......

Gazing at the streets of the lively fortress city of Liheid, the red-haired boy...... Hero Torch let out a cry of admiration.

“You mustn't look around so much, Torch-kun. You'll be looked down upon if you act like a country bumpkin.”

The one who admonished Torch was a petite, blonde woman dressed in the white vestments of the Church of the Holy Goddess.

She was a companion traveling with Torch, the priest and healing mage Chiron Heeksight.

Though you'd never guess it from her body, smaller even than Torch's, she was in fact already an adult, a self-proclaimed “lovely big sister.”

......Though the way she scolded Torch while her own eyes wandered to the fruit at the stalls and the meat grilling at the food stands made her look like nothing but the young girl she appeared to be.

“Shishishi! With this many people packed together, pickpockets can just do whatever they want here!”

The one laughing as he said that, slightly alarming thing was a man named Zydeo, the party's scout.

This slender man had a shady past as a former thief, and since being reformed by Torch, he had been accompanying the hero on his journey as a way to make amends.

“Honestly! Zydeo-san, saying things like that again! Repent! Repent!”

Since Chiron was a well-behaved, pure, spotless, beautiful big sister, she would not tolerate Zydeo's remarks, which tended to hint at committing crimes!

Without a moment's delay, 2 fists were hammered into Zydeo's stomach!

Body blows that sliced through the air!

“Ow! H, hey, listen here, brat! I was just giving my impressions! It's not like I'm saying I want to pickpocket anyone...... Ow! I said it hurts, dammit!”

“I'm not a brat! I'm a lovely big sister! Sei! Sei!”

There was no stopping Chiron's fists as they rained down on Zydeo!

Her flurry of blows, too fast for the eye to follow, came from fists whose talent would surely make any martial artist striving to master the way stare in wonder!

When she first met Torch and set out on the journey, she had been nothing more than a frail priest and healing mage, but while she kept punching Torch's master, Arcus, who was fairly sloppy when it came to drinking, smoking and women (because she didn't like him), she had grown remarkably (probably in the wrong direction for a priest and healing mage)!

“O, ow! Stop it, it hurts! Stop hitting me for real! I'm begging you, please stop, please! Ow ow ow ow!”

“Ahahaha!”

“Don't just laugh, Torch, stop her for meee!”

Carrying on with their usual horseplay, the hero's party made their way through the fortress city of Liheid.

◇ ◇ ◇

“Phew......! Man, that was an incredible number of people! The streets are narrow, like a maze, too. Me, I feel like I'd get lost if I walked around this town alone.”

In a room of a cheap inn they had finally managed to secure, Torch sat down on a hard bed and let out a sigh of relief.

“Ahaha, Torch-kun, you're still not used to crowds? Have something sweet and take a breather! Here you go.”

Chiron seemed to have bought a box of the town's famous sweets before anyone noticed, and her cheeks were already bulging like a squirrel's.

The sweet shared with Torch was a food similar to what he would have called manju in his previous life.

Each one was on the large side, about the size of a fist, and when he broke open one of the round sweets wrapped in light-brown skin, it was packed full of yellow filling.

He took a bite: a simple sweetness.

And a pleasant, familiar scent.

“Ah, this, it's kuri.”

TL Note: “Kuri” is the Japanese word for chestnut.

The taste from his previous life came back to him, and the words slipped quietly from Torch's mouth.

“Kuri? Wrong. It's Kirkree. Don't shorten words, use them properly!”

Chiron corrected him in her best big-sister manner, her mouth still smeared yellow.

“Kirkree?”

“You don't know? You've seen 'em plenty of times since we got into town. Here, that's them. Take a look out the window.”

Zydeo, back in the room after haggling with the inn staff over the price, cut into the conversation.

When Torch peered out the window at Zydeo's urging, there stood a great tree that had burst through the town's mossy cobblestones and spread its branches mightily.

Sure enough, trees like this one had been growing all over town.

Breaking through the cobblestones, or clinging to the town's outer walls.

Those great trees blended beautifully into the scenery of Liheid, a stone town like a fortress, and added color to it.

“Those trees grow spiky burrs, see. And inside those, there are sweet nuts packed in.”

“So it's kuri.”

“It's not kuri. It's Kirkree.”

Chiron began shadowboxing while staring into Torch's red eyes.

Best watch out for slips of the tongue.

“Well, anyway, those Kirkrees are the local specialty around here. In town they only grow here and there, but north of this town lies...... the demon realm of the Ranrananga Mountains, and up there, they say, the whole place is just, covered in Kirkrees.”

Where Zydeo pointed, leaning out the window, great mountains towered.

That was the demon realm of the Ranrananga Mountains.

A land where powerful monsters, capable of easily slaughtering humans, gathered......

Torch gulped.

“Supposedly there's even this theory that the monsters in those mountains gathered there in the first place lookin' for Kirkree nuts.”

“So are they a nuisance, then? Even though the nuts are tasty.”

“Delicious things are not nuisances.”

“......Thanks to the monsters gathering, adventurers gather too, and that keeps this town's economy turning. Shishishi, things ain't always so easy to settle as black and white, Torch.”

“............”

Torch could accept what he'd been told with his head, but his feelings were complicated.

His hometown had been...... destroyed by the monsters sent by the Demon Lord's Army.

He usually acted cheerful, but his heart bore a deep wound from that time.

His feelings simply couldn't accept Zydeo's argument, ‘thanks to the monsters’.

“......Well, that's enough about the Kirkrees. Shall we move on to the main topic?”

Sensing Torch's expression cloud over, Zydeo changed the subject.

“......Yeah. Where ‘Tezonkania’ is, right?”

“Brat...... Chiron, no new oracle has come down, has it?”

“No, it has not. Oracles don't just pop down one after another in the first place.”

Even as she swiftly landed 1 punch in Zydeo's stomach, Chiron looked troubled.

......“Tezonkania.”

Finding this thing, of which they knew only the name, was the hero's party's current goal.

The ancient ruins “Saikanedon's Tower,” located in the kingdom of Tezonka.

The silver dragon Herensia, an apostle of the Holy Goddess who dwelt there, was afflicted by a disease of unknown cause.

She was the Guardian Sacred Beast who protected the ley lines of the whole region, and if she kept weakening and died, this land would lose the keystone of its defenses and would likely suffer even more invasions by the Demon Lord's Army than before.

To prevent that, and above all to save the silver dragon Herensia, who had become their friend heart to heart, Torch and the others had come to this land.

According to the oracle given to Chiron by the Holy Goddess, something called “Tezonkania” was necessary to heal the silver dragon Herensia's illness, and it apparently existed in the northern part of the kingdom of Tezonka...... in other words, around here.

“Well...... then what we gotta do hasn't changed. Let's start by askin' around, nice and steady. Word is there's an Adventurers' Guild branch office across the canal from this inn. Let's head there first.”

“We also need to pay our respects to the Margrave who rules this land. Torch-kun is the hero, and since we have a letter from His Majesty the King of Tezonka, we shouldn't be turned away at the gate.”

“Yeah, then...... break time is over!”

“Yes!”

“Yeah!”

The 3 of them left the inn and got moving.

It's been a while for Torch-kun.

He's moving the story forward in his own way while traveling as the hero.

It seems he's currently in the middle of something like the ‘Silver Dragon Herensia Arc’.

Actually, Chiron's character is kind of crazy.

What's with her......!?

Now then, with the setup out of the way, starting next time this arc's lead finally kicks into full gear!

Hope you'll stick with me!