“Eeeek…! How dare you run away? Cowardly witch…!”
After Ariane escaped the battlefield with some kind of magic, Friede couldn’t hold back her frustration and kept sulking for a while.
“Next time, I will definitely roast that belly with a torch…!”
Such a fierce vow wasn’t like her at all. Ever since confirming my wounds, she had been like this. Even after healing my injuries thanks to Baneum, who used to be a member of the past church.
Well, while I’m now all nice and clean without a single scar, the sight of my burnt flesh rotting was terrifying enough to send chills down my spine.
At least she had managed to heal me, but back when she first saw my wounds, Friede was so worried that tears were falling from her eyes.
Now, with that shock all turned into anger, her grudge against the witch seemed like it could almost reach the heavens.
“I’ll tear her limbs apart and feed them to the dogs….”
Um, maybe I should calm her down a bit. If I leave her like this, she might just keep sulking until dawn.
“Right, right. Friede. Someday we’ll have a chance to meet again. For now, let’s calm down and make sure to repay her at that time. That’s good enough, right?”
I held Friede’s hand and pulled her close, ruffling her nest-like hair to comfort her.
“Yeeess….”
Finally, Friede seemed to settle down and nodded, her cheeks turning red. She looked so adorable, like a well-trained puppy with her spirits immediately deflated.
◆◆
“Thank you for your hard work. We’re planning to return to Svinarant after tidying up, so the two of you can leave first.”
Just after the assassins subdued by Ariane regained consciousness, Edgar suggested we leave first.
He said they didn’t know when the pursuers chasing Ganagl would arrive here, so they intended to leave the place immediately after erasing their traces.
“You guys also did a great job. It’s unfortunate that the damage was more than we expected.”
“No. Since both Ganagl and Ariane showed up, we should consider ourselves lucky that it ended like this. It’s all thanks to you two.”
That wasn’t wrong.
If it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t have even beaten Ganagl, and even if by some miracle they did win, they would have been slaughtered by Ariane who appeared afterward.
“Thank you for thinking that way.”
Of course, saying they survived thanks to us would be embarrassing.
I offered a suitably humble response before leaving with Friede toward the city we had passed through earlier.
Not that we were heading toward Svinarant. It was no longer safe there.
Staying put might mean running into Heid, who was chasing Ganagl, and I wasn’t insane enough to go back.
For now, even if it meant staying up all night, we had to get out of the vicinity of Svinarant.
In the first place, I had tied our horses down below the hill and walked up precisely to do that.
Heeheehee!
As I dashed down the hill, Schwartz, who was tied to a tree, greeted us with some vigorous kicking.
The other horse we had captured on our way to Svinarant had seemingly vanished, leaving only a broken rope behind.
“Fortunately, Schwartz is still here. I thought both might have run away.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s a well-trained horse?”
To think it stayed calmly in place even with the monsters roaring hundreds of meters away. Its guts were on the level of a warhorse, despite being a mere pack animal.
◆◆
After climbing onto Schwartz with Friede, we galloped through the night until we finally left Svinarant behind.
“I need to wash up before entering a village or town. At this rate, I’ll get shot with arrows as soon as I get close.”
Under the sunlight, we looked as filthy and gruesome as the chaotic battle from the night before.
Well, I mean, we had charged and tumbled around in a blood-soaked muddy battlefield, right?
There wasn’t a spot from head to toe that wasn’t caked in a mix of blood and mud, and even the cracks in our armor had bits of the cultist’s guts and tentacle pieces stuck to them.
The clothing underneath was in tatters, soaked in various bodily fluids, glistening in grotesque colors.
You’d think we had slaughtered about a hundred people and emerged from a bath in their blood.
It wouldn’t be surprising if we were mistaken for monsters and attacked. The smell alone was wretched.
Probably because we had been drenched multiple times in the bodily fluids shot out by Ganagl. Our clothes reeked like a filthy rag soaked in spoiled milk left unattended for a thousand years.
With our clothes in that state, even the pleasant scent of our body was meaningless.
Having the stench of sewage mixed with fruit scent surely didn’t make a good smell. It only made it all the more bizarre and repugnant.
It was so bad that the wolves trying to attack us retreated, coughing violently as they looked at us with disdain as if we were some kind of filth.
Neither I nor Friede had noticed the seriousness of our condition since our noses had long gone numb, but seeing the wolves’ reactions made me realize we should probably wash up.
“Um… wasn’t there a small lake nearby? We could wash there!”
Friede pointed towards the forest path and said.
A lake, huh…? Now that I think about it, there was one.
I hadn’t bothered to get close when heading toward Svinarant, but now it seemed like a perfect resting spot.
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
I lightly tugged the reins to turn the direction. Schwartz let out a neigh and slowed down, turning its head slowly into the woods.
◆◆
We found the lake about thirty minutes later.
It was a small lake nestled in the center of the woods. It wasn’t as massive as the central lake in Svinarant, but it looked decent enough for a wash.
“Hup….”
I jumped off the horse, tied the reins to a tree, and approached the lake.
Up close, the lake looked quite enchanting—a small wonder created by nature.
The sunlight filtering through the trees reflected on the surface, making the entire lake shimmer like a mirror, and the water was so clear it barely seemed real.
I felt a bit bad about having to pollute that water with filth.
“This place is nice. Just soaking in it seems like it would clean me up.”
Of course, that didn’t mean I could just waltz into civilization looking like this.
I reasoned with myself that nature would purify the dirty lake water as I placed my sword sheath and bag down on the grass beside the lake.
“Then, shall we take off our clothes?”
Friede trotted over to me, her face filled with strange anticipation as she asked.
Was she hoping to mess around while bathing together? Normally, I might have gone along with that, but this time, the situation didn’t allow for it.
“No, let’s just wash up in our clothes. We don’t know what might pop up in the woods, and what if someone else comes by? It seems a bit much to bathe completely naked.”
I rejected Friede’s suggestion.
In a forest where beasts, monsters, bandits, or travelers could appear at any moment, I didn’t want to be defenseless in the nude.
Besides, after I cleaned myself, I had to wash my clothes and armor too. So why would I want to separate that into three different tasks? I could just wash everything at once while fully armored.
Unless it were some cheap iron armor, the gear I was wearing was made of pure rare metal, with absolutely no worry of rusting from a brief wash in the lake.
Friede’s light armor was mostly leather and steel, so it would rust and degrade easily, but who cares? It was cheap anyway, I could just buy new ones.
“Ah… I guess we have no choice then.”
Friede nodded with a disappointed look on her face.
“It’s not like we can kill ordinary travelers either.”
What did she mean by “not like we can kill”?
I guess our brave hero was planning to dispose of anyone who caught sight of her taking a bath.
Like the Artemis from Greek mythology, who turned a person into a deer to be torn apart by hounds just because they saw her bathing.
“Um….”
Isn’t that a bit excessive?
But… whatever.
I shrugged it off without saying anything.
After all, it was only an assumption and not something that actually happened. If I just washed up, all would be well.
Splash!
I opened the water flask and filled it with lake water before stepping into the water with Friede. We walked in until the water was about neck-deep.
Then I started scrubbing my whole body, washing while still clad in armor, and the thick, murky green sludge began seeping from my skin into the lake, like smoke rising.
As we were becoming cleaner, the lake water became increasingly murky. The foul-smelling muck mixed with the water, spreading out toward the center of the lake.
And then, the next moment.
“KYAAAAHHHHHH!!!”
With a scream that could rival a banshee, something green burst through the water’s surface and shot up into the air.
“What the heck?!”
I reflexively stepped in front of Friede to protect her from the sudden situation, while Friede drew Nibelung from behind me.
A water monster?
No, there hadn’t been anything just a moment ago…?
In the face of this unexpected anomaly, confusion hit me harder than the sense of danger. I never imagined anything would pop out of the water.
What was this…?
As I narrowed my eyes and glared at the unexpected intruder through the dripping helmet, it suddenly emerged.
“KYIIIIII!!!!”
The creature that leapt to the surface shrieked pathetically as it flailed about.
It looked like a young girl.
Its translucent body made up of liquid was stained a murky green in various places, and it looked as if it were melting away like mud.
“Could that be… a water spirit?”
I cocked my head as I was about to swing Nibelung.
“Uh, um. It seems to be a spirit….”
I nodded reluctantly.
…Was this a lake that housed a spirit?
A translucent liquid girl emerging from the lake? Unless a mad wizard had altered a slime to be his wife, what else could this possibly be besides a spirit?
Of course, based on its appearance, it was more like a muck spirit than a water spirit, and it was melting away while screaming…
But it certainly seemed to be a water spirit.
No wonder the lake water was mysteriously clear and pure. It was all due to the spirit residing here. That was an unexpected secret.
“KYIIII….”
The spirit, which had been thrashing and screaming, now lay limply on the surface.
I’ve heard they can use elemental magic and can even speak human languages…
“GIHHH….”
It looked like that was already out of the question.
In its current state, what kind of speech could it muster? From its gaping mouth melting into a long slime, only the sounds of dying breaths emerged.
After a few seconds of this.
The convulsing spirit slowly began to fade and soon completely vanished, leaving behind only a stone that faintly glowed, covered in thick muck.
The byproduct left behind by the spirit when it met its demise, the core of the spirit.
It was just garbage now since it had become rotten and lost its power, contaminated in muck and had no value left.
“This spirit… is real.”
“…Indeed.”
The toxic waste we had released into the water must have been so potent that the spirit could do nothing but die.
Having become accidental spirit killers, Friede and I awkwardly exchanged smiles.
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