Going for the Sob Story

“Hey, you two, I wanna ask somethin'......”

Around the round table, a middle-aged mage, a short man in glasses, and an eerie cursed child......

As the glaring match went on, the first to speak was the middle-aged mage Darakerus.

“How old, are ya?”

And it was a question that, at first glance, seemed to have no place in a discussion about who would own this house in the forest.

“13.”

“............I'm 25!? And, what of it!?”

Emi the cursed child answered with a blank face, Fret with obvious irritation.

“Young, huh...... me...... I'll be 40 soon.”

At their answers, Darakerus glanced at one of them, then the other, then lowered his eyes and said that quietly.

“Haaah!? So what!? Don't tell me you're going to say I should listen to my elders!? Let me tell you, I despise that kind of talk, ‘elders must be respected unconditionally’ and the like!! Those who deserve respect are respected precisely because they act in a way that deserves respect and stand in a position that deserves respect!! Why on earth should I respect a man as obviously slovenly as you!? And naturally, I'm under no obligation whatsoever to humor an unjust attempt at pulling rank by age!! To sum up what I want to say right now in a nutshell: ‘So, what, of, it’!!”

At that, Fret flew into a furious rage!

Maybe there was something...... he'd been bottling up all this time!

“N, now, hold on, calm down.”

At the sight, Darakerus held both palms out toward Fret to calm him down, cleared his throat with an ahem, and said.

“What I'm tryin' to say is, it ain't about me bein' great just 'cause I'm the elder. It's actually the opposite.”

“......What do you mean?”

Emi tilted her head.

“See, first off, the startin' point is, all three of us want this house. Right?”

Darakerus propped his elbows on the table, laced his fingers in front of his mouth, and asked, eyeing the two of them with a heavy stare.

“Yeah.”

“Don't ask the obvious!!”

Emi nodded with a blank face, Fret with obvious irritation.

“But see...... you two...... you're both still young, ain't ya.”

Darakerus closed his eyes with a sigh.

““............””

Not getting what Darakerus was driving at, Emi and Fret glanced at each other.

“When you're young, see, you can do anythin'. You got the strength to shrug off any hardship! But me...... what about me?”

At this, Darakerus flung his arms out with exaggerated flair and turned his palms up in an “I give up” pose!

“You stink.”

“You're shabby!!”

Out of Emi's and Fret's mouths flew some brutally honest opinions!

“Shut up!! But you're right! I'm already, a total wreck! There ain't a hope of a comeback, anywhere!! So, see, when I found this house, see, I was real happy! I figured it was God's reward for me, after I'd crawled around the bottom of society and somehow lived through harsh days! Like He's tellin' me to spend my old age nice and slow in this quiet house! God's sayin' it, to me!”

And Darakerus shouted it, tearing at his shaggy hair!

His tone sounded angry, but there were tears welling up in his eyes, just a little.

In other words...... the tactic Darakerus had chosen to get this house was the sob story.

After all, he wasn't the type who could use his head well enough to negotiate.

But even if he wanted to let violence do the talking...... Emi was here.

He was a fighter, after a fashion, and he'd already sensed that Emi's strength was anything but normal.

“This brat, is bad news somehow!”

The instincts that had kept him alive all these years in the dangerous slums were screaming it at him, desperately!

And with that ruled out, any other way to make his case...... Darakerus just couldn't think of one.

“‘Lived through harsh days’?”

But, alas.

There wasn't a single soft touch here who'd fall for such a cheap sob story.

“Me too, the same.”

This time it was Emi who spoke, her blank face making it plain that Darakerus's plea hadn't moved her one bit.

“I lived in the forest since I can remember, and when I was 5...... the ‘neighboring’ village was destroyed by monsters, so I set out traveling.”

“At 5......? No, way.”

“True. Black hair and black eyes, they say, invite misfortune.”

With that, Emi pinched a lock of her own black hair and played with it.

The aversion to that color etched deep into his mind made Darakerus shut his mouth and frown.

“After that, just traveling. Traveling, traveling, traveling...... I crossed mountains, slipped into forests, crossed the sea...... but, where people live, I can't stay long. Because I, am a cursed child.”

“............”

Listening to her, Darakerus thought about it.

What if, say, a cursed child had turned up in the slums where he'd spent most of his younger days?

The cursed child would surely be shunned for being creepy and killed in no time.

Or captured by an underground organization to be sold to some eccentric.

In the countryside, they'd be shunned by the whole village...... no, that would actually be the kind way.

“I lived in the forest since I can remember” was probably no lie.

She had likely been abandoned.

True, he had to admit it.

This girl's life up to now must have been full of ‘harsh days’, to the point that it was a wonder she was alive at all.

Since she was a cursed child, there was no doubting it.

But......

“‘Crossed the sea’, you say?”

“Yes. I'm from the Golden Continent.”

“How?”

“By teleportation magic circle, to the Eserem Great Sea of Fog. From there...... a lot happened, and I went to the Lasanaskiros Great Desert. And here, by way of the Plateau of Behemoths, I came.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa......”

Hearing the route Emi had traveled, Darakerus was thrown and couldn't tell whether it was true.

After all, he'd mostly only ever worked around Zenalini and had never made a long journey, so he had no idea how hard traveling was.

Besides.

(An adventure like that...... not even Kentaro from that fairy tale I heard as a kid, ‘Kentaro of the Greatsword’, went that far)

For starters, every place along Emi's route was far too dangerous for an ordinary person to go.

Next to the adventures in fairy tales, Emi's journey was even more absurd.

But...... the air of raw strength coming off the cursed child in front of him wouldn't let him simply write the story off as ‘a lie’.

This one...... maybe she really could pull off a journey that crazy......

That, was what she made him think.

At the same time.

Unlike himself, who'd gotten by crawling around a grimy corner of Zenalini.

If her story was true...... then this girl.

Cursed child or not, younger than him or not...... had gone all over the world, living out a grand adventure.

And here he was, like this.

And at that thought, in Darakerus's heart...... a jealousy he had no right to, yet couldn't stop, even welled up......

Before he knew it, Darakerus was glaring at Emi.

“Anyway, I'm, a little tired. All this traveling, I'm tired. So, I want a house.”

Paying Darakerus's jealousy no mind at all, Emi went on flatly.

“Far from people, where I don't deal with them, but still properly civilized, a house, is what I want...... This house, I want!”

And after declaring that, she fell silent again and glared at Darakerus and Fret.

“Hmph...... what, what is with you two, ‘spend my old age’? ‘A little tired’? What are you going on about...... for that sort of thing...... you could just throw up a shack somewhere around here and live in it, couldn't you...... it doesn't have to be this house of all houses, does it......”

Fret's muttering, thick with irritation, echoed through the now quiet room.

Apparently, Fret was talking to himself, the words slipping out without his realizing it.

To him, Darakerus's and Emi's life stories were just noise, something to half-listen to while he thought.

And so, even now, he sat staring at the grain of the round table, thinking.

About how he could outwit these two and get this house for himself......

Thinking about other things in the middle of a negotiation, and talking to himself out loud on top of it, was as careless as it got.

But, then again, he was utterly exhausted from hiking through a forest he wasn't used to.

He was mentally pushed to the brink and had no composure left.

This blunder was born of exactly that.

“No, no, no...... give up this livable living space, with furniture that's high-end any way you look at it, and go live in a shack? Don't screw with me......”

“The outside is cute, so I want this house.”

Darakerus and Emi argued back at Fret's mutterings.

But Fret was still trapped in his own thoughts!

“‘Livable living space’!? ‘The outside is cute’!? The true value of this house, isn't in any of that...... in this, Gyashikinu's hideout, there's......!!”

So, without meaning to, he raised his voice!

And because he raised his voice.

His own muttering...... he noticed how loud it was!

““Gyashikinu's hideout?””

There was no taking back a slip of the tongue.

The two people in front of Fret had found out.

That this house had worth, beyond just being somewhere to live.

That information was like oil poured onto the fire of desire to ‘obtain this house’.

Fret covered his mouth with both hands while breaking into a cold sweat...... but it was already too late.

【The “Neighboring” Village】

Some poor village called Fenoben Village or other.

In reality, far from being ‘neighboring’, it's Emi's birthplace, but because she feels a distance from it, she called it ‘neighboring’.

【Golden Continent】

The setting of Part 1.

The ‘Golden’ in the name is the color of ears of wheat, not the metal.

It has fewer demon realms than the Fantasy Continent, the setting of Part 2, and is easier to settle.

......Or so it has been “set up.”

【Eserem Great Sea of Fog】

A great basin covered in a blue fog that kills an ordinary person within half a day.

The intelligent Flying Kobudai clans, adapted to the fog's high magic power density, are the dominant race.

The capital of the ‘Sky Kingdom of Neverfall’ used to float above the Great Sea of Fog, but stuff kinda happened, and it fell.

The setting of Arcs 19 to 21.

【Lasanaskiros Great Desert】

A scorching world where monsters swarm.

It was the location of the ‘Delenezo Great Prison’ where even Enemies of the Gods were imprisoned, but stuff kinda happened, and it vanished.

Also, there was a mysterious evil cult that worshipped the triangular pyramid, but stuff kinda happened, and it got wiped out.

The setting of Arcs 24 to 27.

【Kentaro of the Greatsword】

A young greatsword wielder said to have appeared out of nowhere on the ‘Great Grassland of Beginnings’.

After numerous adventures, he became a special-grade adventurer, and eventually married a princess of a certain country and became king.

He's the textbook example of rising to the top, and tales of his exploits seem to have spread across the continent as a fairy tale.

Mentioned in Arc 22.