Chapter 5: I Shouldn't Have Done That (5)

Chapter 5: I Shouldn't Have Done That (5)

It had been a long time since I last thought about my parents.

But filial piety was one thing, and Quests were another. There were still six items left to find.

“Wait.”

I had checked every other area of the sewers, so the remaining six had to be here.

I searched around where the kid had been tied up, finding some bones hidden between the roots.

“M-mom...”

As I did, the child recognized the skeleton’s belongings as his mother’s and started crying, but... I couldn’t do anything for him except properly retrieve her corpse.

Anyway, I had found all thirteen various keepsakes, but I felt I would go blind from straining my eyes to look for them without a single indication of their location.

Seriously, those Deep Sea Pearl guys. They had admittedly built a well-made game, but they really hadn’t taken the player’s convenience into account. Well, it wasn’t that bad, though.

“Little brat.”

“Mom... Waah.”

It seemed the child wouldn’t move by himself, so I just carried him in one arm and left the cave. Considering I could easily swing a giant sword with both hands, carrying this kid was easy as pie.

「Purification │ A space becomes Demonized after Demons have settled in it. Once this happens, it must go through Purification.

The Demonized space can be Purified by burning it with Divine Power or Pure Flames. Depending on one’s class, Purification methods may vary.

Demons respawn in Unpurified spaces.

Do not let Demons tread this land again.」

It said the place needed Purification, so I pulled an oil container from my bag and sprayed its contents everywhere.

This system also existed in the original and was actually pretty easy to perform. You got an oil container as a starting item, after all.

Just as I was about to throw a lit torch onto the oil I had spread, the blocked roads came to mind.

...I had just remembered that part. I was sure I had to burn these places to fill the gauge to 100%, right?

「Purification progress: 1%」「Purification progress: 4%」「Purification progress: 7%」Achieving 100% Purification wasn’t a condition to finish this Quest, so it probably didn’t matter much. However, as I expected, not doing it would leave me uncomfortable, so I should try it on my way out.

With such thoughts in mind, I made my way out once I saw that the Purification progress was slowly rising. I felt slightly suffocated, after all. It seemed they had also simulated the lack of oxygen caused by lighting a fire in a closed-off cave.

It would have been nice if they’d just inflicted a slight suffocation. Instead, I could even feel a tightness in my lungs and my heart rising into my throat.

Despite the pain level being set pretty low, it felt extremely unpleasant.

While I lacked any asphyxiation-related trauma, this might cause some controversy. Would others be okay?

I coughed a bit and quickened my steps, covering my mouth with my gauntlet. I still had to hurry since I didn’t know how the child would fare.

Cough, cough.

“...Tsk.”

When I heard the child coughing, I just ran, fortunately much faster than I’d thought.

“You okay?”

“...Yes.”

We escaped that space in under three minutes, though I hadn’t yet left the sewers. I’d only rushed to a place where the smoke couldn’t reach us yet.

The rest was easy. Now that I had learned starting fires would only harm me, I didn’t attempt to Purify this place any further, and finding my way out was very easy as it was a road I had already walked on.

Fortunately, I had a pretty decent memory when it came to orientation. I hadn’t really noticed when dealing with the Goblins, but these passages were unusually long.

I felt like I had been walking for more than half an hour.

Creak.

Bam!

Still, I eventually found the exit, kicked the iron door open, and took a deep breath. It still smelled musty, but the air was fresher than in the sewers.

The rays of the setting sun stung my eyes.

Had it taken me about two or three hours, then? I couldn’t remember when I had entered the sewers, but I knew it was daytime, and an in-game day had eight hours.

Well, it should have taken a good amount of time to find my way around the sewers and defeat all those Demons. Besides, considering the size of that sewer system I had just explored, I felt like even more time had passed, like I had been in there for four or five hours.

If they had provided something like a clock function, I would have known exactly how much time had passed, so that was a bit disappointing.

“Little kid.”

“...?”

Anyway, I checked on the kid in my arms. I could see a confused expression on his dirty face.

Tears still flowed from his eyes, but as long as he was alive, that was enough for me.

I climbed up the riverbank and slowly made my way back to town. I had been told to report to the guild about the mission, so that was what I needed to do now.

“Sir Knight.”

I stopped for a second. After calming down slightly, the kid called out to me in a whimper.

“Mom will be happy by God’s side, right?”

It was a question with a fixed answer.

“Yes.”

I soon reached the Adventurers’ Guild.

* * *

“Oh, Adventurer? What happened... What’s with the child?”

Maybe because it was now evening, the guild was even noisier than before. However, the service windows were a little emptier than before as most of those present were here to get drunk.

Thanks to that, it was very easy to reach the clerk, Izren. I had to report to her and hand the child over as well.

“Take him.”

I pushed the child to her as she came from behind the window.

I expected members of the general public who didn’t carry around giant greatswords would find it relatively difficult to hold him, but the clerk carried him pretty well.

Amazing. I would have stumbled if given a child like that in real life.

“This child...”

“He’s the son of a worker. He said he went into the sewers to find his mother. If you want more information, listen to my detailed report.”

I didn’t really want to go into too many specifics with the child around, so I just roughly summed up what had happened.

“What?!”

Naturally, the clerk looked back at the child I had handed to her like a relay baton. The kid was tightly clutching his mother’s keepsake, remaining silent.

“I-I’ll see to this matter right away. We will take care of the child for now.”

「❖ Cleaning the Dirty Sewers

∎ Demons eliminated: 71 / ??

∎ Subquest - Keepsakes found: 13 / 13

∎ Subquest - Traces of deceased Adventurers retrieved: 10 / ??

∎ Optional: Saved the Child」

Once the clerk said that, one part of the Quest was shown as cleared. I guessed the others would also get cleared once I reported the rest.「❖ Clean the Dirty SewersAdding to my confidence, the Quest information was updated. The sewer Quest was really over.「Adventurers’ Guild │ You can do various things in the Adventurers’ Guild, such as accepting Quests, reporting the completion of Quests, and receiving rewards.While waiting for the client, I gained more insight into the Guild’s system and even got some dinner.

Tada dada!

The SFX for completing the Quest sounded in my ears.

“Then there’s no reason for me to stay here any longer.”

Whoops. My expression almost broke. Why did those guys set the sound effect volume so damn high? If I didn’t lower it, it might give me a heart attack one of these days.

“I’ll go now.”

I stood up from my seat as I calmed my pounding heart, not putting back the chair I had pushed out.

“In that case, I shall take my leave as well.”

The clerk also stood up to follow behind me.

Stepstepstep.

It was then I could hear the unconcealed sound of running from the hallway. I could feel the urgency in their steps.

“What’s going on?”

I opened the door and stepped aside. Soon, someone came rushing into the room, almost falling. The clerk stepped back in surprise.

“S-sir!”

“Is your buttocks on fire or something? What is it?!”

The old man spoke up. I waited and watched the situation while trying to refrain from laughing out loud. It was a bit startling, but this had to be part of the Main Quest.

Even if I didn’t remember much of the original, my years of gaming experience told me this smelled like a Quest.

“We received a rescue signal! A flare has been shot from somewhere nearby! It’s a signal flare belonging to our company!”

“What!?”

As expected.

“I informed the castle guards, but they said it would be difficult to move out at the moment and would take some time...!"

“Those bastards never move their asses despite blowing through our tax money up there!"

The old man yelled, his blood pressure obviously rising through the roof. Seriously, that guy seemed like he could easily live to be 200.

“Send out my men now!”

At that moment, my eyes met with that old NPC.

“You! You also go!”

“...Do not order me around.”

There was no way someone with this character’s temperament would respond well to one-sided orders. He didn’t even say that Demons were involved. Actually, it was pretty uncertain who attacked them.

After reaching that interpretation, I crumpled my facial expression to show off my pride.

“So you’re saying you won’t do it?”

“I have no reason to listen to your orders.”

“Aargh, so are you going to do it or not?!”

However, it would be somewhat weird to refuse outright. I didn’t really have any reason to absolutely refuse.

I glanced at the clerk. She also happened to look at me.

“As this seems to be an urgent matter, we can postpone the creation of a contract.”

“...You’ll have to provide me with reasonable pay.”

“I’ll take care of that!”

“I’ll agree then. Lead the way.”

We should leave right away. But where did we even have to go? After gathering that information, I should hurry up and kill the threat.

「❖ People in Danger

∎ Optional: Join the mercenaries

∎ Move to the battle site

∎ Raiders eliminated: 0 / ??

∎ Subquest - Number of survivors: ?? / ??」

I opened the Quest Window just in case and found it holding useful information. Even though the contract hadn’t been written yet, a Quest was created anyway.

I checked the Quest contents and tried to guess the location of the battle site. Even without a Minimap, it wasn’t difficult to check for certain locations using my Area Map; it was simply uncomfortable having the entire Map floating before my eyes all the time.

“Get the horses ready right now!”

“Y-yes!”

Fortunately, the messenger also doubled as our guide.

“What about mercenaries—”

“Not necessary.”

It was just a tutorial, so why should I drag those mercenaries with me? I didn’t really want to put up with those nuisances.

「❖ People in Danger

∎ Optional: Join the mercenaries

∎ Move to the battle site

∎ Raiders eliminated: 0 / ??

∎ Subquest - Number of survivors: ?? / ??」

The Subquest telling me to find survivors really bothered me.

While it didn’t give a definitive number, my intuition as a veteran told me this was a timed Quest. Unless bringing mercenaries with me was absolutely necessary, I thought it would be best to go to the battle site first.

“B-but it’ll be dangerous there.”

“...Are you actually suggesting that I would be in danger?”

It was just a starting Quest. How could something like that be dangerous to me? I was just worried about all those NPCs. Considering how long it would take to get there, I might not be quick enough even if I left now.

“Just let him go!”

Then, the old man suddenly stepped in.

“If he managed to clean up the sewers on his own, he wouldn’t end up croaking even if he went ahead!”

“Y-yes!”

He unexpectedly helped me out. The messenger led me straight to the stables.

“You can ride that one!”

The horse he gave me seemed big and muscular. However, horses were a popular means of transportation in games, so instead of being scared, I immediately got on its back.

One of the games I played before was a horse-racing simulator. It had even been evaluated as being really close to reality.

Thanks to that, I was pretty familiar with horseback riding.

“Giddy up!”

The pole-like legs of the horse began to gallop right away, crushing the earth beneath its hooves.