Chapter 53，Part3

[wafuu].

Pochi came to take the corpse of the Chimera in its mouth and placed it in front of me for praise, wagging its tail around with a smug look on its face.

Was this really a dragon? Pochi was becoming more and more like a dog, right? At any rate, let’s pet its fur and heal its battle wounds with light magic. But…

“…scorched.”

[Carol’s not good at holding back.]

It was a Chimera, but more than half of it had been burned away. It was not a very profitable material. But, well, I could ask the commercial guild to auction off the best materials in other countries, so I couldn’t process too many of them.

“But the experiment was a success. Next time, I could launch it faster.”

[…Don’t shoot that at me, okay? ]

“…”

[Don’t even joke about it!]

“Nn.”

I understand. Why couldn’t it trust me? I was just doing damage calculations to see if it could survive a direct hit.

“Well then, let’s go back to the village of the demon tribe for now.”

[It’s not really a village anymore, though. The number of demons increased a lot in the past 10 years. They seem to be feeling uneasy because Carol doesn’t show up much.]

“…What’s going on?”

[A hunter was worried because he saw more humans in the Demon Forest, which was close to the human territory.]

“Not adventurers?”

[I don’t know.]

Are they hunting for slaves again? I had previously given them a hard time, but they were strangely well-equipped for slave hunters, and they were working together like an army, so I had to be cautious.

*** n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

I went to the commercial guild and the adventurers’ guild to see if I could pick up any information, but as usual, the crowd was split up like the Ten Commandments.

“Oh, you, subhuman Witch!”

One of the young men pointed at me and shouted. Who was it?

“You are still in this Caenista Kingdom! You filthy subhuman, get the hell out of my country!”

“Abel, what are you yelling for?”

“Father!”

Behind the young man, a middle-aged man, almost mature, slowly emerged from the crowd, and his face broke into a smile when he saw me.

“Oh, Young Lady, it’s been a long time. As expected of an elf, you haven’t changed at all.”

“…Bert-san?”

He was the former adventurer knight I met in Dungeon, who seemed to be a strength supremacist and challenged me, but I couldn’t deal with him because our basic stats were too different.

“Father, do you know this Witch?”

“Oh, she is the one I mentioned before. Was this Young Lady, by any chance, the adventurer who was the reason you started using a two-handed sword? That’s a coincidence, hahaha.”

“Kuh.”

The young man in his mid-twenties grunts in frustration and glares at me.

Abel…Abel…? Ah, could it be Abel, who was the escort for the duke’s son and was sold the pretzel that Alice dropped?

At that time, he was dressed like a knight with a one-handed sword and shield, but I didn’t recognize him because he was equipped with a two-handed sword now.

I remembered that Uncle Bert said he had a son, and I remembered that Abel’s father was a high-ranking knight, wasn’t he?

“Oh yes, Young Lady, you should fight with me! I’ve trained a lot since then, and I think I’m getting stronger. But I don’t know how strong I am if I fight with someone other than the Young Lady.”

“Don’t want to!”

“…l will pay you for it.”

“One large gold coin per challenge.”

“Ten days’ worth of booze… let me think about it.”

Yup. I knew it was impossible for such a person to be a high-ranking knight.

Abel changed from his mid-teens to his mid-twenties, the same age as Cam, so his impression changed quite a bit, but Uncle Bert’s hair turned a little whiter, so not much has changed for him.

I guess it was true that people with greater magical power have a slightly longer lifespan.

“Father, let’s get going! You came all the way here so that we could select people with our own eyes.”

“Oh, that’s right. The Young Lady was also a great adventurer, wasn’t she? Are you familiar with the Devil’s Forest? I’d like to hire you as a guide.”

“…Hah?”

“Father, she’s a subhuman!”

“You’ve become quite an aristocrat in this country…oh well. So, Young Lady, a big shot, decided to go on an inspection tour of the Demon Forest, and he’s supposed to destroy the city of the Daemon Tribe that they found the other day as a showpiece. So, they wanted a guide.”

“…”

The city of the daemon tribe in the Devil’s Forest? Eradication? Showpiece?

The fact that the tribe’s village could be in danger was a bit shocking, but could this be an Otome Game event, a raid on the tribe’s stronghold?

The event was about the Crown Prince who attacked the stronghold of the demon tribe, the advance guard of the Demon King who was planning to invade Caenista Kingdom, and I think…didn’t the hidden character appear in this event?

Those words brought forth the information from the depths of my memory that I had forgotten.

The hidden character’s fiancée, who was accompanying the heroine, was paralyzed in the attack, and the heroine consoled the grieving hidden character. A route occurred, and in the end, the jealous fiancée was abandoned in the forest, and there was a happy ending…

The fiancée who was dumped …could it be me?

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