Chapter 330:
Not Again!
“Hello there,” the village watchman said, approaching us with a smile for some reason. Was there more to him than met the eye?
“Hello. By yourself today?” Druid asked.
I looked around, and sure enough, nobody else was with him, which was odd. Watchmen always traveled in groups of two or more when they were on patrol, in case something came up. I searched for auras, thinking someone might be hiding, but there really was nobody else around.
“Well…I’m off duty for the day, actually,” the watchman explained. “I was just looking around town when I noticed you two walking out the gate. I was going to wait until you got back, but I just couldn’t hold myself back anymore, so I followed the magic energy to you.”
He followed the magic energy?
“Why did you want to see us?” I could hear the tension in Druid’s voice.
The watchman, also picking up on it, quickly held his arms out and waved his hands. “It’s not what you think. I’m not suspicious of you, I just, um, wanted to thank you.” He looked at us both, his eyes filled with insecurity.
“Thank us?” we both asked.
This was only our third day in Hatahi. I couldn’t recall us doing anything worth thanking. Oh, wait! Did Druid maybe help him out in the past? I looked at Druid next to me, but he shook his head in reply.
“Um, my name is Ashley. So…my father is the adventurer guild master’s assistant. If you’re suspicious of me, feel free to check with the guild about who I am. My father will vouch for me.”
“Ashley?” Druid said.
“Yes?” Ashley’s face lit up. He didn’t look to me like he could possibly be a bad person.
“What did you want to thank us for?”
“Well, um, I just wanted to give you and Miss Ivy a proper thank you.”
“Me?” Druid asked.
“And me?” I echoed.
I stared hard at Ashley, but I couldn’t remember anything about him. Maybe the summoning circle had tampered with my memories of him.
“You see, Mr. Druid, you rescued me from a monster three years ago. And, Miss Ivy, you and I have never met properly, but I wanted to thank you for helping take down that criminal organization.”
So Druid saved him three years ago, and I helped get rid of the crime organization.
“Huhhh… Three years ago?” Druid asked, looking closely at Ashley. After a while, he shook his head no. “Sorry. I can’t remember,” he apologized.
“Oh, it’s okay, please don’t apologize. I didn’t want to make you feel bad. See, about three years ago, a giant boulder near this village crumbled apart and a big mess of monsters got loose. Do you remember now?”
A bunch of monsters were set loose from a giant boulder? I didn’t know that was a thing. Gee, that’s scary.
“Oh, right, I did help clean up some monsters when I happened to be near Hatahi.”
“That’s right! I was still a rookie at the time, and you saved my life. See, I was a little full of myself since I have the detect magic skill. My cockiness got me attacked by three monsters and I thought I was a goner, but you saved me, Mr. Druid.”
Gee, Druid’s quite the hero.
“Huh? That was you? Wait…what?! Was that guy really you? You seem…different?”
“Arrrgh, yeah. I used to be a little shi…well, let’s just say I was going down the wrong path… It was a phase. You could say I’m quite a different person now. Um, wait, I didn’t mean…!”
Yikes, Ashley’s face is bright red. He must’ve really changed a lot.
“Hee hee! Mr. Druid, what was Mr. Ashley like back then?” I asked him.
Ashley waved his hands nervously in protest. “P-please, don’t ask!”
Seriously, what did he use to be like? Now I really want to know.
“Well…he was going through a phase a lot of youngsters go through. Yeah, we’ll go with that.”
A phase a lot of youngsters go through? Um…what does he mean by that?
“Wow, so that kid was you. What a shocking transformation,” Druid said, his voice rising a little with amusement.
“Everything was so crazy with the monsters back then that I never got a chance to thank you properly. So, um, thank you so much, truly. I have a family now because you saved me that day. Seriously, thank you so much.”
Ashley bowed at the waist to Druid. He has a family… Does that mean he got married?
“Well, thank you for coming all this way to thank me. It means a lot.”
Ashley and Druid smiled and shook hands. I found myself smiling too as I looked at the heartwarming scene.
“And, Miss Ivy,” Ashley said, releasing Druid’s hand and turning to me.
“Yes?” What could he be about to say?
“Thank you so much for keeping my daughter safe from that criminal organization.” Ashley bowed deeply to me. He must have meant that criminal organization. So their evil had reached all the way out here, too…
“Please, sir, don’t bow to me. I’m just happy your daughter is okay.”
“So am I, really,” Ashley nodded, beaming radiantly. It was clear just how precious his daughter was to him.
“Um, if you don’t mind my asking…what happened to your daughter?”
“Some of the organization’s goons had been planted in Hatahi’s guilds and village watch. When you helped bring them down, we got a list with all their names. We found their secret base and went to investigate, and they had written plans to kidnap the children and grandchildren of Hatahi and traffic them. They even had a list of names of the kids they were targeting.”
Wow, that gang really was rotten to the core.
“And when I saw my daughter’s name on that list, my spine froze. It was probably because my father is the guild master’s assistant. My daughter is home safe right now because of what you did, Miss Ivy. I truly cannot thank you enough.”
“I’m glad their crimes here were stopped before they even started. I really mean it.”
I’d truly been terrified when they almost kidnapped me. I had Ciel to keep me safe, but there’s no telling what would’ve happened to me if they’d succeeded. Just the thought of it scares me to death.
“Ashley, may I ask you a question?” Druid said.
“Yes, anything.”
“It makes sense that you know about me since we’ve met before, but where did you hear about Ivy? Her involvement was top secret.”
Huh? Oh, come to think of it, yeah. Only the top dogs are supposed to know about all that.
“I sensed a powerful magic energy near the village yesterday, stronger than any I’d ever sensed before. But strangely enough, I wasn’t at all scared by it. That tugged on my curiosity, so I went to check it out with the watchmen who were on patrol with me. Now, just seeing you was surprising enough, Mr. Druid, but I was even more startled by the incredible levels of magic energy I sensed from Miss Ivy’s bag.”
So I was right. He did sense the magic energy in there.
“Then what happened?”
“Even when I got closer to the energy, my impression of it stayed the same, so I thought I’d keep an eye on her for a while.”
“I see. So you followed us?”
If he did, that would mean we hadn’t noticed him.
“Oh, no, Mr. Druid, I knew I couldn’t outsmart you. So I went to ask the head watchman if I could check back at the spot where I’d found you. And the guild master was there, too, so she told me about the young girl traveling with you. Then, they talked about Ivy among themselves for a little bit and decided to tell me.”
Aha. So that’s how he knew my name.
“Okay. Well, we don’t want people knowing about this,” Druid said. His eyes were a little stern. And I didn’t blame him—this was top-secret information.
“Well, um, there was a reason they told me. See, the head watchman’s daughter was kidnapped by the organization…and after everything, she was unaccounted for.”
“What?!” we both gasped.
“So he just had to thank you, Miss Ivy.”
“Did they ever find his daughter?”
“She’s still missing. The head watchman says he’s resigned himself to the fact that she’s probably dead.”
The more I learned about that organization, the gladder I was that I’d helped destroy it.
“Also, he said he wanted to meet you two. He didn’t want to cause a fuss by calling you both to see him alone, so he sent me to be the go-between. After all, I can always find you by sensing your magic energy…and I owe a debt to you as well.”
So the head watchman had gone out of his way to keep everything discreet. We would have to thank him for that.
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