The Extra Strategist’s Royal Road Chapter 183
After arriving in Iswakan, we immediately began preparations to enter the Forest of Lament.
First was the purchase of teleportation scrolls.
We bought a total of 15, including extra, which cost 1 million rilangs. That’s about 100 million in our currency.
“Wow….”
Even though we bought high-quality scrolls, this much?
However, Rinoa didn’t seem to mind at all.
She seems to think that since the Branford family will soon fall, there’s no use in holding onto money anyway.
Anduha, who came as Rinoa’s escort, was fidgeting anxiously, but Rinoa boldly spent money as if relieving stress.
“Hmm….”
As I looked at the teleportation scrolls with an ambiguous reaction, Erina whispered in my ear.
“What’s wrong?”
“No, just… I was wondering if we really need that many.”
“If it’s because of the price, I understand… But it’s an essential item, isn’t it?”
Teleportation scrolls are essential for dungeon exploration, but due to the aforementioned price issue, there are cases where people don’t use them.
Mercenaries are especially like that.
The mercenaries who died at the hands of monsters when I first came to this world were like that too.
“What I’m saying isn’t about the price issue. Think about it, the Forest of Lament is famous for having many missing persons, right?”
“You don’t mean…”
“Yes, it means the teleportation scrolls have been nullified.”
There are ways to nullify teleportation scrolls.
Having the spell dispelled, time limit expiring, or being subjected to mental attacks.
However, there are teleportation scrolls that can counter spell dispels and mental attacks, and even for time limits, if you attempt suicide before the time limit ends, it will activate, so this doesn’t explain why there are so many missing persons.
‘That unknown reason must be the secret of the Forest of Lament.’
I had no intention of digging that deep.
For now, searching for Gunther was the top priority.
I packed the scrolls Rinoa bought into the luggage. At this time, Rinoa spoke to me in a reproachful tone.
“Wade, when is your group arriving? Stop flirting and get to work. Work.”
“When did we flirt…?”
“Are you unaware? You’ve been doing it all the way here!”
Rinoa glances at Lucretia as if seeking agreement. Lucretia is also surprised, wondering if I had been unaware.
I was about to argue back, unable to accept this, but Erina grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back, her cheeks reddening.
Rinoa sneers.
“Hmph, fortunately, it seems Miss Erina was aware.”
“How could this be…”
Well, my distance with Erina has shortened compared to before. There’s a sense of shared experience, and Erina has become more proactive after no longer considering her family’s reputation, and loneliness has built up while staying alone in this world.
Even so, to be pointed out by others to this extent.
“…I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“I’m not saying don’t do it at all. Just do your work properly too.”
“It seems my group is a bit late. Shall we have a meal first?”
“No, lunch can be late, let’s enter the Forest of Lament first. My bottom hurts from sitting in the carriage for so long.”
“Then we should secure a boat first.”
At that moment, a slender figure wearing a hood approached us. I could tell who it was by their aura.
“You’re finally here. Gaspar, this way.”
“…Heh.”
Gaspar chuckled and removed his hood.
As he revealed his face, Rinoa’s eyes widened.
“A pureblooded beastkin…!?”
This world had no discrimination against beastkin compared to our continent. That’s because monsters, a common enemy, were threatening their lives.
There was no room for such pointless acts as interspecies discrimination.
Paradoxically, because of this, pureblooded beastkin were rare. In this world, when you say beastkin, it almost always means mixed-blood.
So it wasn’t strange for Rinoa to be surprised seeing Gaspar in his beast form.
Gaspar, seemingly used to such reactions, didn’t even glance at Rinoa and spoke to me.
“It’s been a while, Ars. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”
“Good to see you too. But you’re a bit late.”
“I arrived quite early. There was too much time left, so I was preparing a boat in advance. Let’s go right away, it’s a boat that doesn’t need the kingdom’s permission, so we can depart immediately.”
“That’s a bit difficult. We came here as part of the Academy. We need to get formal permission.”
“Can’t we just leave a few people behind for that?”
Rinoa, who wanted to enter the Forest of Lament today, accepted Gaspar’s proposal. We decided that Lucretia and Anduha would take care of getting permission from the kingdom, while we would depart first.
* * *
The boat we boarded was a medium-sized vessel owned by a merchant guild. Besides us, about 50 people were heading to the Forest of Lament, each with their own purposes.
Rinoa, who came out to the deck, savored the sea breeze and said, “I thought we might be smuggling since you said it was a boat without the kingdom’s permission. But that’s not the case.”
“Time tends to loosen regulations.”
Apparently, they managed it strictly just a decade ago.
“I hear there are quite a lot of resources that can be obtained from the Forest of Lament. As manpower became necessary, these illegal routes naturally multiplied. Still, they’ll thoroughly inspect on the way back to the kingdom. They have to collect taxes after all.”
“Hmm. I always think this, but you’re oddly knowledgeable about such matters.”
“I told you. I was a general of a kingdom, and I indirectly managed a large territory.”
“…The fact that it no longer sounds like a lie is chilling.”
Rinoa, who had no particular thoughts about Erina, seemed to reconsider my vassals after seeing Gaspar. It’s different to have someone older as a subordinate.
Rinoa seemed intimidated by the wild aura surrounding Gaspar and was showing wariness. When Gaspar approached me, she left with a cold expression.
Gaspar snorted and said, “Is that the woman? The one you said you’re serving?”
“It’s more of a transaction than serving.”
“Well, it’s your business, so I’ll believe you. But make sure you don’t get backstabbed.”
“I’ll have to be careful.”
Juras, who used to handle the dirty work, isn’t here. As such, I had to deal with malicious schemes myself.
“More importantly…”
I looked Gaspar up and down.
“Looking again, your aura has changed subtly. I suppose you’ve learned magic as I suggested?”
“Dealing with those monsters with just aura alone was difficult. Still, I didn’t learn things like throwing fireballs or creating rocks. I don’t like that kind of stuff, and I guess I’m too old to learn easily. So I just mastered two simple spells.”
It’s body enhancement magic.
Acceleration to increase speed and augmentation to increase strength. These are simple spells anyone can learn, but their effectiveness varies greatly from person to person.
They’re extremely effective when used by someone with a good physical base. This is why woodcutters and hunters can work as mercenaries on the side.
It seems that when someone who uses aura employs these spells, it adds a special quality, producing a peculiar effect.
“Is it the nature of your aura… I’m looking forward to it.”
“You should be. As I am now, I could even kill that Anton guy. Well, if Anton learned magic too, we’d be back to square one.”
Gaspar mutters, looking at the distant horizon.
“I hate to say this, but… It’s better not to be too optimistic.”
“What do you mean?”
“I looked into it a bit before you came, and it seems that the woman who was talking about the magic continent wasn’t so much exiled as she was kidnapped.”
“…!”
“It was strange from the start, right? No matter how much she was exiled, who would be foolish enough to enter the Forest of Lament?”
“That’s…”
“In the Forest of Lament, there are laborers who are short on money and criminals sent for penal labor by the state. Most of them are men, so quite naturally, a demand for prostitutes arose.”
“You don’t mean she was sold as a prostitute!?”
“It’s not exactly uncommon. It happens all the time in the army too. Even on this boat, there are prostitutes brought by merchants for that purpose.”
“Damn it!”
Even though I knew about it, the thought of someone I knew being subjected to that made my blood boil.
Gaspar, as if he had anticipated this reaction from me, sighs and says, “Leave the underworld matters to me. It’s clearly not something you can handle. It’s better to leave this kind of thing to someone familiar with it like me. Phew! As you said, I do miss that Juras Pamilion guy. If we left it to him, he would have handled nine out of ten things on his own.”
“He was certainly capable.”
I suddenly wondered what Juras was doing now.
There’s no way he wouldn’t have figured out how I went missing.
* * *
The Forest of Lament, located in the central part of the Southern Continent.
While that’s what people called it, the kingdom had given it an official name.
Freyja, the bridgehead for the reclamation of the Lost Lands.
It was a medium-sized city with a resident population of 10,000, and since quite some time had passed since its formation, the facilities were surprisingly decent.
At this scale, there would certainly be a red-light district.
As much as I wanted to storm in right away, as promised, Gaspar was going to handle this part.
I was examining the search map that Rinoa had obtained from the national facilities, trying to calm my anxiety.
‘Four explored routes… And four unexplored routes.’
The distribution of missing persons was roughly 70,000 in the unexplored areas and 30,000 in the explored areas. The term ‘explored’ just means they have maps, nothing more.
Recently, dungeons have been discovered in two of these routes. The danger level designated by observing mages was level 7 for both. Level 7 is considered a low-level dungeon, so it could be cleared quickly, but due to the fear of the Forest of Lament itself, adventurers were reluctant to attempt to subjugate these dungeons.
I was thinking of subjugating one of them. At the very least, I planned to send Rinoa and Erina back after that. Searching for Gunther would be less risky if it was just Gaspar and me.
As I was organizing the dungeon information, Gaspar returned with a troubled look on his face.
From his expression, I could be certain that things had taken an unexpected turn.
“Ars, we have a problem.”
Gaspar, who had searched the red-light district, said he was able to quickly find a lead on that woman.
After hearing Gaspar’s description of her appearance, I immediately thought of one person.
“It’s Senior Meissen!”
The fiancée of Olaf and the daughter of the Duke of Roifeir in the Kingdom of Europe.
“Probably. I heard she used healing magic.”
“Then it’s definitely her. So? What happened to Meissen?”
“That’s where it gets complicated. It seems she was originally kidnapped to be a prostitute, but during the port inspection, she caught the eye of the noble who rules this place.”
“You don’t mean…”
Meissen, while plain compared to the women around me, was objectively quite beautiful.
The noble who noticed her beauty bought her as a slave just before she was to be sold to the brothel.
“What’s the name of that noble?”
“That’s not really important.”
“What do you mean…?”
“Because that guy is already dead. On the night the woman was sold to the noble, a bear-like man attacked the mansion, killed all the guards and the noble, and kidnapped the woman.”
“…!?”
It’s Gunther. It had to be Gunther.
Realizing that he couldn’t legally reclaim Meissen, Gunther resorted to drastic measures.
“You can guess what happened after that, right?”
“…I think I can. Why Gunther went missing.”
There’s no escape route here. Gunther, escaping pursuit, had no choice but to enter the Forest of Lament after leaving the city.
“I’ll say it again, things have gotten complicated. This forest is vast. It’ll take at least a month to find Gunther. Moreover, it’s already been a month since he went missing. We’d be lucky to find even his corpse in a search.”
“Don’t even say such ominous things. Gaspar, I’ll give you 6 hours. Search around the mansion and find out which direction Gunther fled.”
“It’s been over a month already. There won’t be any traces left.”
“You have good instincts, don’t you? Even a rough guess would be fine, so go and check.”
“Kuhah! You’re working me hard. Alright. I’ll find out in 3 hours.”
Now that it’s confirmed Gunther entered the forest, there’s no time to waste.
Even so, we can’t move until tomorrow morning when Lucretia and Anduha arrive.
I started preparing for the dungeon search while intensifying information gathering.
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