The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick up Trash - Volume 8 - Chapter 383

Chapter 383:

Who Was It?

“YOU OKAY?” my father asked worriedly.

“Yeah, I’m just a little sleepy.”

We had decided to wake up early the next day and send the fax to my father’s mentor, but there was so much on my mind that 

I had a hard time falling asleep. Between the lack of sleep and the overthinking, my head hurt.

“You should drink a potion just in case.”

“I will.”

“So, what happened? You didn’t sleep much last night.”

He must have known I wasn’t asleep, since he asked me several times in the middle of the night if I was okay.

“I had so much on my mind, I just couldn’t sleep. Even when I did fall asleep, I’d just wake right up again.”

“I’m sorry. Well, after we send our faax, let’s head straight back to the tent for a nap.”

A nap, huh? That might be just what I need.

We went into the merchant guild and looked around, but there weren’t many people there. Ordinarily, the place would be packed this time of day with merchants from this and other villages running around.

“This silence is a little weird, isn’t it?” I remarked.

“Well, nobody can enter or leave Hataka right now.”

There was a faxing area tucked away and out of sight from the building’s entrance. We went over there to find a man at work.

“Excuse me, sir, we’d like to see if we’ve received any faaxes.”

“Certainly. Aha, it’s you two. Please place your guild card on the board on the table.”

My father put our guild card on that spot, and one of the shelves faintly glowed. The man took several sheets of paper off the shelf and handed them to us.

“Please check them to make sure they’re in order.”

We looked over the senders’ names. We had faxes from Gnouga and Lord Foronda. Oh, there’s one from Vice-Captain Velivera, too. That’s odd, usually Captain Oght sends the faxes. I hope everything’s okay over there.

“Everything fine on your end?” my father asked. “I got a faax from Bolorda.”

“Uh-huh. Everything’s fine, thanks.” I looked up at my father and noticed he was staring at one of his pieces of fax paper with a very strange look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Uhh…I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay.”

I wonder what it is? It’s probably from his family. I hope nothing’s wrong.

“Everything all right?” the man asked us. My father answered that everything was fine.

“We want to send some faaxes of our own. Could we use your table? We’ll also need three pieces of paper, please.”

“Here you go. Not many people send faaxes around here, so take all the time you need.” The man handed my father three sheets of paper.

“Is business always slow here?” my father asked.

The man nodded. “It sure is. Nobody really uses faaxes except merchants.”

Huh. I didn’t know people don’t use faxes much. I guess that explains why we’ve been getting ours so promptly, no matter where we are. Yeah, now that I think about it, we’ve never really bumped into anyone else using faxes anywhere.

I sat down at the nearby table with my father.

“So we’ll tell him there’s a monster with an undetectable magic energy and aura. Anything else?”

“We should probably tell him the number of monsters has suddenly increased.”

I watched as my father wrote the fax next to me.

“Good idea. Anything else we should say?”

Is there anything else?

“Oh! We’d better tell him we couldn’t find any illegal dumps in the forest, either.”

“Right, that’s important.”

Are there any other things we need to let him know?

“Ivy?”

“What is it?”

My father looked up from his fax and stared at the ceiling. “Do you really think there aren’t any illegal dumps?”

I hadn’t been so sure about that myself. Between the rumors and what we knew about the monster in question, it was impossible to say for certain that there weren’t any illegal dumps. First, there was the rumor at the wash area. That lady’s son felt something was wrong when he went to the dump he always used. I thought that was a pretty crucial piece of the puzzle. Then, there was that monster with special powers that showed up on the outskirts of Hataka. They said that a monster’s amount of magic energy was unrelated to its level of power, but a little digging later revealed that monsters really did need a certain level of magic energy in order to go berserk or be powerful. 

The monster that was prowling around Hataka was good at masking its aura, so that must have been its special power. And if that’s all it was, maybe there was a special magic item hidden in a little pile of trash somewhere. But our monster was powerful enough to wound elite-level adventurers. In other words, there had to be a big pile of trash somewhere that was making monsters more powerful.

“I think one must be out there somewhere,” I said.

It was a place that couldn’t be found by normal means. In other words, it was a hidden illegal dump. And since it was hidden, it was not a dump for adventurers. Then whose dump was it? Judging by the rumors, it was probably intended to dispose of huge amounts of trash from the village, so it was most likely a dump meant for Hataka. But if it was meant for Hataka, then why was it hidden? Therein lay the problem: Why did it need to be hidden? When the village’s renowned tamer passed away, waste disposal had gone way down in Hataka. Did they want to keep that information hidden from the villagers?

I couldn’t understand why anyone would need to do that, though. All I did know was that it wasn’t the sort of dump adventurers would pass by and use. The trash from the village had to be well maintained, and the list of people able to do that was very short.

“You think so, too?”

“Yeah, there has to be a hidden illegal dump. And it’s probably got a lot of trash in it.”

I looked at my father, and he sighed quietly with a smile. “What a big hassle. Do you think Hataka’s leadership is behind this? Or maybe one of the villagers acting on their own?”

Oh! Yeah, maybe the village leaders are responsible. I never thought of that before.

“It really is a hassle.”

That was actually why I’d had a hard time sleeping the night before. No doubt about it, we were in the middle of a giant plot. I looked around. The man who’d helped us earlier was gone, which was probably why my father had taken the opportunity to talk about this with me.

“Oh, by the way, I’m wearing this. Sorry I didn’t tell you.” My father showed me a sound-canceling magic item hanging from his neck.

“Gee, all that worrying for nothing!” The sight of the item made the tension melt from my shoulders. When had he even bought such an item? “So, when did you realize that, Dad?”

“About yesterday. I thought over all the rumors and everything we knew about the monster and it made me go huh?”

“Me, too.”

“Now our real ordeal begins…” My father sighed heavily, and I followed suit.

“You mean figuring out who knows and who doesn’t?”

“Yeah…”

I wonder how Zephyr fits into all of this? Those men are full of mysteries.

“Oh, want to ask your mentor about the gentlemen of Zephyr?”

“Good idea. I’ll ask him if he knows them.”

I think they’re good people. And Sora said they were safe. But there is something about them, something besides the thing that’s making my father worry.

“All done. Want to read it?”

“It’s all right, I read it over your shoulder.”

And there isn’t anything worth reading a second time, right? I mean, all there is to it is “Monster that can mask its aura and magic energy discovered in Hataka Village, numbers multiplying over the past several days. We’re stuck here. Do you know the men in Zephyr? Write back with everything you know.” It was just too simple. Come to think of it, why did he get three sheets of fax paper?

“Okay. I’ll turn off my magic item, then.”

“Sounds good. What are you going to use the other sheets for?”

“Ahh, yes… I was thinking of writing my family.”

“Oh. I assumed you were gonna use all three sheets for your mentor.”

“I’d never do that.”

“Ha ha ha ha! You don’t have to be so stern about it.”

The man at the faxing station had returned, so we sent our messages. We would probably receive replies in the next couple days. I hoped we would get something good.