Chapter 138:
Reunion
“WHAAAAT?! Kragon gave you a lift through the skies?!”
After their reunion at the Hunters’ Guild, the Crimson Vow had gone to the inn where the Wonder Trio were staying and booked a room of their own. They grabbed a bite to eat in the first-floor dining room, and then both parties gathered in the Wonder Trio’s room to talk over cups of tea pulled fresh from Mile’s inventory.
During dinner, other guests had been sitting in earshot, so the Wonder Trio had stuck to giving a bland digest of all they had heard regarding the recent goings-on in the capital. Only now were they finally getting down to business.
“Wh-why would he need to do that? And since when are you and Kragon even friends?! Start over from the beginning!”
In answer to Mile’s questions, Marcela and her companions explained how this had all come to pass.
Mile was flabbergasted. “Wha… Wh-wh-wha…?!”
None of the Crimson Vow had so much as blinked at the reference to Mile-001 or the explanation that she was comprised of “sprites from a magical land that had assumed Mile’s form.” They were long accustomed to Mile’s tricks of optical camouflage. When it came to the rest of the story, Mile had given the Crimson Vow and the Wonder Trio roughly the same level of explanation regarding how she worked with the nanomachines, so everyone was more or less on the same page.
That is, until…
“Wait, what? Teleportation across continents with storage magic?!” All four members of the Crimson Vow exchanged shocked looks.
The ladies were dazed. La-dazed.
“Y-y-y-you can do thaaaaat?!”
“Why are you surprised, Mile?” Mavis shot back. In truth, Mile’s shock was understandable. She certainly hadn’t taught the Wonder Trio to do any such thing—in fact, the idea had never even occurred to her.
The only reason the Wonder Trio shared the same inventory was that Mile had been hesitant to ask the nanomachines to allow three girls with level-1 authorizations to each have access to her own inventory. That would necessitate finding three separate extradimensional spaces and assigning nanomachines to oversee each one. She had proposed the idea of three people sharing one inventory to spare the nanomachines extra labor.
She’d never dreamed that this would be the result.
“………”
Meanwhile, the revelation that the Wonder Trio had apparently surpassed Mile as users of storage magic had broken Reina and Pauline. Their eyes rolled back into their heads, and their mouths hung open as if their very souls were leaking out.
The Trio knew that Mile hadn’t told the Crimson Vow much about the workings of the inventory, explaining only that it was a special kind of storage magic with an abnormally large capacity and the ability to halt the flow of time. Having been sworn to secrecy by Mile, the Wonder Trio kept their explanation vague. They framed it as though Mile had given themselves and the princesses a hint that allowed them to get started. Then, they explained, they had trained intensively to master the magic on their own. Their efforts had fallen short, so the three of them had been forced to combine their powers to sustain one storage space—or so the story went. It having been made clear that Reina and Pauline still hadn’t mastered storage magic, the Trio endeavored to downplay the magnitude of their abilities.
On the flip side, the Wonder Trio had been astonished to hear that Mavis had successfully taught herself storage magic. After all, they had never mastered the magic so much as been handed a cheat by Mile. Mavis’s achievement was stunning, especially for a non-mage, and the Trio offered her their heartfelt, awe-filled compliments.
Still, the whole thing came as quite the shock to Reina and Pauline. Had Marcela been the only one to master storage magic, they might have been envious, but they wouldn’t have taken quite so much psychological damage.
But no. All three members of the Wonder Trio had managed it.
And it wasn’t just them. Two pampered princesses with no proper training (or so Reina and Pauline assumed) had also pulled off the feat. Worse still, their own party’s swordswoman—who wasn’t even a mage—had made mastering the magic look like a walk in the park. They were starting to feel like any amateur off the street could learn storage magic.
Yet despite practicing like crazy each night before bed, Reina—who considered herself a bit of a magical prodigy—had yet to even reach Pauline’s level.
Pauline had talked a big game to her friends about how, as a mage and a merchant, she would do whatever it took to master storage magic. And although Pauline’s practice had seen slightly more results than Reina’s, she was still just as far from calling herself a full-fledged storage user. They were in the same boat.
It was hardly any surprise that their minds swirled with humiliation, defeat, and self-loathing.
It was going to be a while before the pair rebooted their systems…
***
Several minutes later, Reina and Pauline sipped their tea to calm themselves down, still attempting to regain a grip on their sanity. Their hands hadn’t stopped shaking, but they were doing their best to hold it together.
While they were both out of commission, Mile had filled the Wonder Trio in on the Crimson Vow’s adventures on the new continent. The Trio were appalled to hear that the Vow’s usual shenanigans had carried on unchecked.
“I see the Crimson Vow isn’t quite up to the task of reining you in, Miss Ade—ahem, Miss Mile. They don’t know you the way we do. As your childhood friends, we really should be the ones by your side…”
“Say what?!”
Mavis wasn’t the only one to react to Marcela’s not-so-subtle suggestion. At her words, even Reina and Pauline snapped out of their stupor, their faces twitching.
“Childhood friends?! Give me a break!” Reina howled. “You’re just old classmates! You’d never even met before the academy! If you count as childhood friends, so do we!”
“Correct. We first met Miss Mile when we enrolled in the academy as fellow ten-year-olds. Wouldn’t you agree that meeting at such a young age more than qualifies us as childhood friends? In contrast, when you girls first met Miss Mile, you and Miss Mavis, at least, were already adults over fifteen years of age. You also met at the Hunters’ Prep School, a vocational training school of sorts. By that point, you were as good as working professionals, not students. I struggle to see how the term ‘childhood friends’ could apply to your relationship.”
“Hmph…”
The Crimson Vow were on the defensive. In a heated back-and-forth, the calm, cutthroat Marcela had the advantage over the emotional Reina. And though Pauline was a skilled negotiator, when it came to a logical debate, Aureana had a more extensive breadth of knowledge.
To be honest, neither Mavis nor Monika had much to contribute to the lineup. Still, the Wonder Trio had the upper hand.
“Please don’t misunderstand. We aren’t out to steal Miss Ade—Miss Mile from the Crimson Vow. Even if we did, what do you think would happen once the residents of the other continent found out?”
“Oh,” all four girls gasped.
“Precisely! We would be demonized for driving a wedge between the four saviors of the world—the divine messenger, the holy knight, the arch-saint, and the grand sorcerer. We would go down as the most nefarious villains of the century for stealing the divine messenger for ourselves! Though bringing Miss Mile home to Brandel would at least earn us domestic acclaim, as soon as we took a step beyond its borders, our lives would be in danger at the hands of her most radical zealots. We would be labeled enemies of the divine!”
The scenario Marcela described was all too plausible. The Crimson Vow could say nothing in response.
“Moreover, even if you were to be separated from Miss Mile, none of you intend to return home, keep your heads down, and manage your territories, correct? You would prefer to live out your ideal of an adventurous hunter lifestyle on a continent where no one recognizes you, yes? And of course, you have no intention of parting ways with Miss Mile.”
The Crimson Vow still had no rebuttal for her.
“If that’s all true,” Mile cut in, “why did you come here, Miss Marcela?” It was a perfectly reasonable question.
“Because we were worried about you, of course!”
Monika and Aureana bobbed their heads furiously in the background.
Tears began to form in the corners of Mile’s eyes. “You were…?”
“Yeah, right!” Reina butted in. “I bet they got tired of governing their lands or managing their constant flood of marriage proposals, so they took a page out of our book and made a run for it!”
“Hey!”
Suddenly, the members of the Wonder Trio wouldn’t meet Mile’s eyes. Apparently, Reina had been right on the money.
“I can’t imagine there are many girls your age who’d want to be swamped with paperwork or get stuck in a political marriage. Especially since you’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to live a fun, unfettered life. Plus, you’re perfectly capable of supporting yourselves without husbands.”
Mile, Pauline, and Mavis all nodded along, everything suddenly making sense. They had taken the exact same route themselves, so of course they understood this line of thinking.
All three members of the Wonder Trio were the same age as Mile. This meant they were younger than both Reina and Pauline, to say nothing of Mavis.
“What’s your plan from here on out, then?” Mile asked them.
Marcela held her head high and declared, “We plan to bring you along for a thrilling tour of this continent!”
“That is the exact opposite of what you just said!!!” Reina, Mavis, and Pauline yelled in reply.
“Shh! Keep it down! We’re going to get yelled at by the innkeeper or the other guests!”
“Whoops!”
In truth, any noise was mostly Mile’s fault for neglecting to put up a sound barrier. She had erroneously believed that this would be a normal, no-drama conversation. She took the next moment to hastily throw up a barrier, so now the group could scream to their heart’s content.
“I-It’s not what you’re thinking,” Marcela continued. “We don’t intend to take Miss Mile from you. We simply wish to accompany her as well.”
Reina, Mavis, and Pauline all fell silent. Mile looked pleased as punch.
“A seven-person party would be way too big!”
“Five mages, one swordswoman, and one magical swordswoman? That’s so unbalanced!”
“Two merchants and a whole party of nobles…” Pauline muttered, though that wasn’t quite accurate. Monika was the daughter of a merchant, but she wasn’t one herself. Also, Monika and Aureana were baronetesses. Because this was a hereditary title rather than a noble rank, they were technically still commoners…though they were just about the closest a commoner could come to the nobility.
Regardless, the noble status of anyone in the group hardly mattered in a distant land where no one recognized them.
Nitpicking aside, the three members of the Crimson Vow still had some valid points regarding the viability of their parties combining. The Wonder Trio clammed up, seemingly struggling to think of a rebuttal. Until…
“Then we’ll form a clan.”
“Huh?” chorused the Crimson Vow.
The term “clan” was derived from a word that meant a group of families. Among hunters, it denoted a gathering of several parties.
Most of the time, the parties in a clan worked separately, but occasionally they might team up to tackle larger requests, and in the event of an emergency—say, an incoming monster stampede, or an unreasonable demand from someone in power—all parties belonging to a clan would join forces to confront the problem with might and main. There were various potential perks to being part of the clan even under ordinary conditions, such as information exchanges, member swaps, mock battles, and financial and personnel support.
Of course, there were plenty of potential downsides, too. If one party gave another a loan, they risked never being repaid if something happened to their fellow clan members. Or a member of an allied party might turn to crime, thereby discrediting the entire group. There was also the possibility of interparty swindling, the poaching of the most talented members of one party by another, and even the danger of romantic entanglements within the clan. Still, most of those risks existed whether or not one joined a clan—they were simply liabilities of interacting with other hunters.
“I’m of the mind that our two parties ought to work together as a clan. We don’t need to stick together all the time. In fact, we should probably work separately in most cases, simply enjoying a rapport as sister parties. However, we can occasionally team up to do larger jobs together and sometimes even lend each other our forces.”
All four members of the Crimson Vow were wide-eyed at Marcela’s—or rather, the whole Wonder Trio’s—proposal.
“Allying yourselves with us would also allow you to enjoy the benefits of both the Princess Transport System and Wonder Trio Transport System I mentioned earlier. Once one of our number is transported back to the old continent via the Princess Transport System, we will have the means to send the rest of you back and forth between the two continents without informing either princess. As soon as we are all assembled on the same continent, we will need the princesses to facilitate the process again, but we already explained to them how the system is meant to work. In fact, this is the entire reason why we granted the princesses shared storage magic, so they have no right to object. As long as they don’t realize that it’s the saviors of the world they’re smuggling, there should be no issues. And this will allow you to visit your families with relative ease.”
The members of the Crimson Vow could think of no objections to this.
Neither Reina nor Mile had a family to visit. Still, they had friends and benefactors they wanted to see and lands to govern. The deal was even sweeter for Mavis and Pauline, who did have families back home.
Of course, this wasn’t necessarily the Crimson Vow’s only option. They could always ask Kragon to help them get from one continent to another; however, they were reluctant to pester him too frequently, and even with his help, the trip was a lengthy one. The Storage Warp method developed by Marcela was a game changer.
“………”
Marcela’s proposal was tantalizing, and the Wonder Trio’s clever application of their acquired ability boggled the mind. Reina, Pauline, Mavis, and even Mile were all at a complete loss for words.
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