Chapter 81: Let’s Carefully Consider What to Prepare During the Journey to the Royal Capital
Morning. We left Barrietta and headed toward the royal capital in the Coluna Frontier Count house’s carriage.
The Chicks who had received yesterday’s instructions had already returned from the Dark Python extermination.
However, they couldn’t enter Barrietta at night, so they had been waiting near the eastern gate where we were scheduled to depart.
Thanks to Chick Captain’s report, we confirmed how the Chicks had fought in Bahana village.
They had helped Lona, a widow who had lost her husband and was desperately raising two daughters, by bringing the giant Dark Python straight to the adventurers’ guild that morning and asking for a purchase.
In addition to the Dark Python, they had brought various hunting spoils that Logan and the others were calling my separated bodies, stored in sub-space compression. I chose some and bought them all at once for today’s processing.
At the Barrietta adventurers’ guild, they were already processing Bahana village’s Dark Python extermination request, so we canceled it (adding reward money and guild contribution points to the guild, but of course they declined). The fangs, skulls, and pelts were paid extremely well. The meat was turned into long-lasting processed products and dried meat. All of it was tied up and carried by Logan and his ten subordinates.
I thought the dried meat would take time, but apparently they had magic for convenient processing — both dried meat and processed meat could be finished in a few hours. With a rush fee, they completed everything by morning.
According to Logan, the village chief of Bahana was "not very trustworthy as a human being," so he wrote letters to self-defense leader Rodolfo and to Lona. To Lona he divided up enough gold coins to live comfortably for the rest of her life, along with some processed and dried meat. The rest of the gold and goods went to Rodolfo. In the letter he said he owed a huge debt to the Lona family and was grateful, so he wrote that it was up to Rodolfo and the village to divide it as they wished "consulting with the chief."
He knew well that people like that would sulk or do whatever they wanted unless their name and status were properly mentioned. Since he couldn’t hand it to them directly, he had Rodolfo deliver the list.
Chick Captain also sent several selected subordinates with the Chicks to Bahana village.
That was why the letter was going to them — Chick Captain knew Lona and Rodolfo’s faces from when they were in Bahana.
The letter was written in my name, "from Lord Yabe."
Apparently Lona had noticed that Logan’s contracted beasts were referring to me as "Lord Yabe." She was quite sharp.
Basically, if I didn’t mention my name, it would look like the wolves had written the letter.
Now that Logan and his 11 wolves were heading to Bahana, we currently had 50 wolves following behind the carriage.
Besides Logan, Wind Fang, Thunder Fang, and Ice Fang were also coming with him, so Garbo was acting as the top wolf attendant for my group.
Chick Captain’s group was divided into Bahana, royal capital survey, and carriage-area guarding teams. Two-thirds of them had already been sent to the royal capital.
...As for what to do with Chick Captain’s large number of rescue requests, that’s a separate issue. I also wanted new information. Especially how people in the royal capital were reacting to the fact that the King had summoned me. Was it just His Majesty’s whim, or was there more behind it? What did the "pro-Yabe" faction and the "anti-Yabe" faction feel like?
...Come to think of it, there were probably some weird people too.
The ones who had tried to revive the Demon King Gulaad seemed like they just wanted to cause some chaos and destruction for fun. That was going to be a real pain.
I organized the information in my head.
The journey to the royal capital was a straight one-day move to a village on the highway, overnight stay, another move, and then we would pass three more villages. The largest town on the highway connecting to the capital was Barlere. If possible, I wanted to buy a lot of things we couldn’t normally get in Barlere. I also needed to cash out some of the accumulated hunting monsters.
After passing Barlere, we would travel through two more villages and arrive at the royal capital Barlon.
Roughly, it was a one-week journey through the King’s direct territory.
This week was extremely important.
Probably, even after arriving in the capital, the audience with the King would require some scheduling. It could be as short as three days, or as long as a week or more.
But if there were many enemies in the capital, we might not have time to go visit Irina’s house and greet her parents. We might have to focus on countermeasures.
On the other hand, if the enemy faction was small or my visit to the capital wasn’t that big of a deal, it would be very lucky. I could handle Chick Captain’s rescue requests while shopping in the capital and buying rare monsters at the adventurers’ guild. I could also greet Irina’s house. The schedule was that on the night we arrived in Barlere we would receive Chick Captain’s final information report on the royal capital.
"I need to carefully examine the content..."
"What’s wrong, Yabe?"
"Hm? Ah, the journey to the capital is about a week, so I’m thinking about what to prepare during that time."
"Prepare...?"
"Yeah. I need to consider words for the (King’s) greeting, (what to wear during the) audience, and so on. Irina also needs to work hard on her (greeting to my parents)."
I answered casually.
"Fueh!? Words for (greeting my own parents)... clothes for (visiting home)... Y-Yeah, I’m glad you’re thinking about it. I’ll do my best too (on the greeting/persuasion to my own parents)!"
Irina answered with her face bright red, muttering. What’s wrong with her?
With that slight? imbalance, our group continued the journey toward the royal capital.
