Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter 2

Short Story:

The Mad Dog King Finds a Master

I WAS HUNGRY. It’d been days since I’d had a solid meal. I was strong of arm and fleet of foot, but now I could barely lift my arms, and my legs shook so badly I couldn’t even stand straight. All because my belly was empty. There was nothing in there. The last thing I’d eaten was a bug I’d caught on the side of the road, after which, that same night, I’d been hit with a ferocious stomachache. I threw up again and again, in blinding pain all the while. I didn’t get a wink of sleep and puked out everything else I’d eaten. Before the pain finally subsided, I even lost control of my bladder. It had to be the bug that did it. Now, because of that bug, I was sprawled pathetically on the ground, staring up at the sky. After a whole night of stomach pain on top of my stamina being totally gone, I no longer had the strength even to stand.

“So this is it…” I realized I was going to die. It was only a short walk to the main road, but I didn’t have the energy. And even if I could have crawled, no one would help me when I had no money or strength left to my name.

I was going to die. This was where it ended. Ghislaine Dedoldia was going to starve to death right here. I was supposed to be a Sword King, but instead of death in battle, I was getting a pathetic death from starvation. And all because I ate that teensy bug. As the realization hit me, my life began to flash before my eyes.

The memories that hit me were of the day Paul and I and the others had disbanded the party, and what came after. That day, we’d all been in bad moods. We all wanted to be rid of each other, myself included. I’d wanted to leave them, but after I did it, my chest grew tight with a loneliness I couldn’t describe. I remember my gloomy mood had me scowling for about a month.

After the split, I went from place to place around the Central Continent. There was a period where I thought I’d go on crawling labyrinths like we had up until then, but alone, I couldn’t keep track of food and items at all. Even then, though, I wasn’t interested in joining another party. I knew better than anyone that I couldn’t get on with other people. I was not keen to experience another separation like the last one, besides. To shake off the loneliness, I moved to the Asura Kingdom. I’d heard it was a highly prosperous country, so I figured even someone like me could land a job there. What a fool I was. For adventurers—especially high-ranking adventurers—the Asura Kingdom was not an easy place to live. In the capital of Ars, I barely got any quest offers I could take. Fighting was my only skill, so I looked for hunting quests, but they were C rank at best—nothing an S-rank adventurer like myself could take on. At the same time, prices in the Asura Kingdom were high, and just staying at an inn quickly burned through the little money I’d saved while we were still a party. If there were no quests, I thought, I’d just kill monsters myself and then sell what I collected from them. But there were no monsters around the capital. It wasn’t until I’d totally exhausted my savings that I found out all the monsters were regularly hunted down by the knights.

After the inn threw me out, I wandered the city streets. I lived like a stray dog, scrounging for food scraps—although my master had drummed it into me that “If you want to live with people, you live by their rules,” so I never stole or murdered. 

It was during that time that I heard the rumors.

The Citadel of Roa in Fittoa to the northeast treats beastfolk well. If any beastfolk out of work were to go there, they’d find jobs.

Latching on to that idea, I set off. I hadn’t been eating well, so my body felt heavy. I was in no condition to survive the journey. All the same, I headed northeast. I devoured whatever looked edible—grass, bugs, anything. When I came across a stream, I drank until I was ready to throw up. I had thought about going into the forest to hunt and gather food, but then I remembered that in the Asura Kingdom that privilege was reserved for hunters with permits, so I gave that idea up.

I managed to reach Fittoa and was almost at the Citadel of Roa…and that was when my strength gave out.

“I ate a bug, and now here I am dying with this foul taste in my mouth, like some sick joke…”

I remembered the bug I’d eaten yesterday. Usually, I could sniff out poisonous bugs and plants, but apparently, I was so hungry that my nose wasn’t working. Or maybe it hadn’t even been poisonous. Maybe I just didn’t even have the strength left to digest anything, so all my body could do was throw it up. Either way, I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t move. This was the end.

“I never thought I’d die in a place like this…”

At the very least, neither my master nor any of the others I’d trained with at the Sword Sanctum would have guessed that I’d die like a dog in a ditch. I’d always thought my death would come ­after being defeated in battle. That lot from the Great Forest might have predicted I’d meet this sort of end, though. They never stopped wanting me dead… But I suppose that’d be a wish, not a prediction.

Ah, but that’s right. There was one person who foretold that I’d die like this.

Ghislaine, after you leave us, I reckon you’ll end up out of work, wandering from place to place until you starve to death.

To be sure, Geese, our party’s thief, had said that. And he was absolutely right. Every now and then, that guy’s guesses were so accurate it was as though he knew the future. What else had he said…ah, yes…that’s right…

You’re worth your salt as a swordswoman. If you stopped being so scared of getting close to folk and helped people out or taught ’em how to swing a blade, I reckon you could get by.

Of course. Of course, that was what I should have done. When he said that, I didn’t think I could ever teach sword fighting, but maybe, if I taught them like I had Paul, I could train up an apprentice.

“Ha…” That sort of advice came back to me only now that it was too late. I was slow on the uptake, same as ever. I couldn’t argue with Paul if he mocked me for this.

“Paul…” Now I thought about it, where had he ended up? I wondered if his child with Zenith had been born safely. I’d heard they were moving to the Asura Kingdom, but nothing else since then. I was a bit worried…

“Heh.” As I thought the word worried, a chuckle escaped me. Paul was a resourceful guy, all in all. He’d messed up at the very end when the party split up, but he never usually made any major mistakes, and while he often made small ones, he managed to get things right in the end. He was that sort of man, so I was sure he was still managing to swing things his way. How conceited was I, an idiot lying here on the verge of death, to worry about a guy like him?

I really was a fool. There were other paths I could have taken, other ways I could have chosen, and yet…

“So this is how weak my will to live was…” If I were reborn, I’d work a bit harder in my next life. Rather than saying I was too stupid like it was an excuse, I’d cudgel my brains until I remembered. 

“…Wasn’t much of a life,” I muttered, then closed my eyes. I wanted to at least die in my sleep.

Just then, a shadow fell over my face.

***

That day, Eris Boreas Greyrat went out to play in the river with her grandfather Sauros. Sauros was a stern man, but he doted on his granddaughter. That morning, Eris had said, “I want to go see outside the town!” So he complied, finding a gap in his busy workload to take Eris out to play.

They sat in the carriage on the way home, Eris looking pleased. “Well, Eris, did you have a good time?” Sauros asked her.

“I had the BEST time!” she replied without hesitation. In the middle of a grassy plain that stretched out as far as the eye could see, she had chased after fish in the cool water, plunged in from the rocks, swam… For Eris, who was always shut up inside and who, on her occasional outings, never went beyond the town limits, the river that passed through the grasslands was more wide open and wonderful than anything she had known until then. 

“Let’s go again!”

“Well, of course we shall,” Sauros said with a smile. He was thinking that next time, they could go further. Eris, he was sure, had never seen the ocean. While playing in the river, she asked her maid, “The ocean isn’t like rivers. It’s salty and big and deep, right?”

Given how excited she had been by the river, the ocean would probably have her jumping for joy.

“I thought the ocean—” Sauros started.

“Stop the carriage!” Eris cut him off with a shout that filled the cabin. The driver peered through the window; Sauros nodded straight away, and he brought them to a halt.

“Here, Eris, what—”

“Just wait!” 

Eris leaped out of the carriage the moment it stopped. Sauros nodded to the guard for them to go after her, then disembarked himself.

Fortunately, Eris had not gone far. She and the guard stared down into a bush about ten meters away. Apparently, they had found something.

“Grandpa!”

Sauros hurried over to her with long strides. Then, he looked down at what Eris had found.

“Why, someone’s dead by the roadside!” A beastfolk woman lay on her back, her eyes closed. From the way she was dressed, she was likely an adventurer. But her cheeks were sunken, and death hung over her.

“Grandpa! She’s beastfolk!”

“Well, you don’t see that every day! One of the Doldias! And by the look of the ears and tail, a Dedoldia!”

The Doldia tribe was rarely seen in the Asura Kingdom—much less a pure-blood Dedoldia, who had the blood of the king of the beasts and seldom ventured out of the Great Forest. It was unbelievable that one would be dying on the roadside in a place like this…

“Mm…” The woman’s ears twitched as though the noise annoyed her, and her eyes opened a sliver. There was life in her yet. Right away, Eris crouched down.

“Hey, what’re you doing down there?”

There was a long pause as the adventurer stared at Eris without reserve, then said hoarsely, “I’m about to die.”

“Really! But your ears and your tail are so pretty! It’d be such a waste if you died!”

“It might be a waste, but I no longer have the strength to live. Leave me be.” So the adventurer—so Ghislaine said.

She still wanted to live, but her spirit and strength were all gone. For some reason, she couldn’t find the words to ask for help. Ghislaine had already accepted death. She had accepted it was her fate to die like a dog. But Eris could have cared less about a thing like that.

“Okay! Then you can be my pet!” Eris declared enthusiastically, her voice ringing out across the plain. “Right, Grandpa? I can, can’t I?”

“As you please!” Sauros replied at once. He had no reason to object to a Dedoldia coming to live under his roof. Of course, he never considered that Ghislaine might have ideas he disapproved of. 

Ghislaine stared at Eris and Sauros wide-eyed. From the “Okay!” to the “As you please,” the whole conversation had made no sense, leaving her lost. But then she remembered that this was what she’d been like, too, long ago, and the chuckle slipped out by itself. 

“Heh… If you’ll keep me,” she said, thinking back on the words of her old party member, “I’ll teach you to fight with a sword.”

“You will?!” Eris’s face lit up with delight. She had always wanted to learn how to use a sword. “It’s a deal!!”

And so Ghislaine’s fate was decided. There and then, they gave her the leftovers from their packed lunch and saved her life. Out of gratitude for her survival, Ghislaine swore her loyalty to Eris.

What no one yet realized was that Ghislaine was a Sword King, and that under her tutelage, Eris’s skill with a blade would improve at a remarkable pace…