Ch. 105
“I just don’t get it.”
How could this be happening?
[What now. Again?]
“I mean, I’m a modern woman—beautiful, wealthy, and incredibly talented, right?”
[…Ah, sure.]
“I’m capable, intelligent, with a small but devoted following, and my personality is… great.”
[You kind of hesitated there.]
I do have a conscience, after all.
“Anyway. But! Why!”
And that tiny bit of conscience was about to snap from stress.
Or maybe I’d already snapped.
“How can someone like me be wandering the middle of nowhere for ten days?! This is a loss for humanity!”
[Even if you yell at me…]
“Aaaargh! I’m so sick of rabbit meat!”
[It’s not like you’re actually lost, right? You’re just following the compass…]
“Who cares about that!”
I threw the compass that had been pointing in the same direction day and night as hard as I could into the grass, and Rai hurriedly picked it up with an “Oh no!”
Rai was currently transformed as an ogre.
[Master! If we lose this, we really will be lost!]
“Whatever!”
[If you’re going to pretend to be nice, you should go all the way…]
“Shut up! I just want a proper meal! I want to sleep in a bed! I want someone to serve me! I want civilization!”
I threw a tantrum while sitting on ogre Rai’s shoulder, but the fact that we’d been endlessly wandering the woods didn’t change.
It was green everywhere I looked.
Grass here! Grass there! No matter where I went, it was all forest.
How much farther until I finally got out of this damned forest?
“When am I going to see civilization?!”
My fifth meltdown seemed to annoy Rai, who was shooting me a pretty exasperated look.
[You should’ve just let them warp us out when they offered.]
“You want me dead?!”
[It’s not like you’d actually die.]
“You don’t know my pain!”
I slammed my fist onto Rai’s head in anger, but an ogre’s head was harder than a rock, so I instantly regretted it.
Hitting a metal spirit—definitely a sign I was losing it.
My delicate fist throbbed all the way to the bone, but my noble pride wouldn’t let me show it hurt.
“Ugh…”
[That must hurt.]
“You little punk.”
[What? Why me? Master, you’re always picking on me!]
“If your master hits you, you should know to turn soft!”
[How’s metal supposed to be soft?!]
“Why not! You’re a metal spirit! Figure it out!”
[There’s a time and place to ignore your essence! Why don’t you ask a water spirit to burn paper, too!]
Argh!
Ten days after leaving Magi’s lair, my temperament had gotten even pricklier from too much camping.
Fatigue and anxiety kept making me irritable.
Not that I was all that nice to begin with.
“This isn’t a personality test! Are you sure this compass is working?”
[It’s endless forest either way, but what else can we do but trust it?]
“Isn’t it just broken, like Toka’s Orb?”
[Hey! What if those two dragons sabotaged us because we absorbed too many jewels?]
That sounded possible for a second, but I quickly shook my head.
“No way. I got the compass before we—uh, before we got the jewels, so that’s not it.”
I’d gotten three main gifts from Magi.
The so-called dragon heart, which was basically an ocean of mana; a one-handed sword Magi crafted himself with Rai’s special alloy—
To me, it seemed like a masterpiece, but Magi called it a failure and tossed it aside, so I picked it up for my future.
A dragon’s sign of friendship. If I gave it to the king, he’d be overjoyed.
You couldn’t find a better bribe.
“Come to think of it, Magi was really generous.”
[He was a bit of an idiot, but a decent guy.]
“Right. He gave us a ton of jewels too.”
[Geez, he kept giving even when I said that was enough.]
The last gift was the mountain of jewels I got the day I left.
They were definitely gifts.
Not loot—just gifts, since he offered and I accepted.
I did take about two-thirds of the mountain of jewels in the vault.
“…It was a bit much, huh?”
[Yeah, just a little.]
“The mountain kind of disappeared.”
But if I’d taken them all, they might have raided humans again, so I left as much as I could.
I do have foresight. And I’m generous.
Most of the jewels Magi swept from the empire probably ended up in Rai’s stomach.
Anyone who didn’t know better would wonder why a spirit who could create jewels at will would be so greedy.
But for spirits, there’s a huge difference between having something absorbed and not having it at all.
It was always more efficient to spit out what was already absorbed than to make something new.
There was no downside to absorbing as much as possible.
And unlike before, I had plenty of mana, and Rai now had his own supply from the dragon heart, so spitting out absorbed stuff barely used any mana.
Basically, Rai was a walking treasure vault.
And—
“A wild boar!”
My trusty hunter, too.
“Go fetch, Rai!”
I jumped off ogre Rai’s shoulder and pointed to where the boar had run.
Rai quickly transformed into a wolf and shot off after the fleeing prey.
Rai had become more and more multi-functional with each day.
A high-end worker, if you want to be nice; a jack-of-all-trades, if you don’t.
He’d finally become pretty useful.
* * *
I gathered dry branches, built a fire, and sat nearby to wait for Rai to return.
It was cold in the woods, but I had a temperature-regulating cloak, so I was comfortable.
Of course, Magi had given me that cloak, too.
I was wearing it when I left, so he must’ve meant for me to have it.
If not, I’d just return it in twenty years. That’s what friends are for.
Our relationship might have started with a kidnapping, but I’d grown fond of him over time and didn’t dislike him so much anymore.
After feeding Magi so many times, I got better at hunting and even picked up a few new skills.
I could even handle monster guts now without flinching.
Maybe seeing them eaten raw all the time leveled up my tolerance.
“Seriously, where did he go?”
I’d never tell Rai, but it felt really empty when he wasn’t around.
Like missing a limb or something.
‘He’s so loud, it’s hard not to notice when he’s gone.’
Bored, I poked at the fire with a stick and glanced around.
Night was falling quickly in the woods, and being alone out here was usually suicide.
There were plenty of monsters and other dangers like bandits lurking in the deep woods.
At this point, I’d probably be happy to see bandits—at least they’re people.
“I’m starving.”
When I first left the academy, I never imagined wandering alone like this, but now it didn’t even bother me.
Maybe it’s because I survived a dragon—the final boss?
Now, almost nothing fazed me.
Well, I’ve gotten pretty strong for a human, too.
Thinking of Rovenin for no reason was unpleasant.
Every so often, I’d recall how he wiped out a bunch of orcs by himself.
He moved like a pitch-black wind.
He’d slice off monster heads without breaking a sweat. All I could do was barely follow the afterimage of his sword.
Could I beat Rovenin now?
[Huff, Master!]
Lost in thought, I looked up to see Rai dragging back a wild boar as big as himself. He really looked like a real wolf—except for being gold.
“You’re late.”
[That thing was fast! It’s hard to run in the woods, too.]
“Anyway, good job.”
Whenever Rai was a wolf and I patted his head, he’d close his eyes and fold his ears back as wide as possible.
Like he wanted even more petting.
Snake, ogre, whatever his form, Rai was always Rai.
My one and only spirit.
My idiot. My friend.
My subordinate number one.
* * *
[Master!]
“Hmm?”
I wiped my mouth, jolted from my doze.
I was riding on ogre Rai’s clasped hands, using the ride-for-sleeping method.
Since Rai neither eats nor sleeps, this was possible.
[I sense something.]
“That way?”
Rubbing my neck awake, I looked in the same direction as Rai.
It was the same direction the compass was pointing.