"Baiye, there's another high-grade magic crystal over here."
Several hours later, in a tunnel of the mine east of the city, Ningning held a glowing mage-lamp in one hand and pointed with the other at an inconspicuous nook nearby, speaking to Baiye.
"There is? How come I don't see it?"
Baiye put away her short blade, kicked aside the spider-monster at her feet, cleaved in two, its legs still twitching, and peered carefully by the faint light of the mage-lamp:
"Where is it... hoh, Ningning, you're a marvel!"
With that, Baiye leaned over, slid her hand into the crevice in the nook, and drew out a magic crystal glittering with a piercing blue light.
"How on earth do you do it? Why is it that the moment you point somewhere, it's a top-quality magic crystal?"
"It's nothing, I just have good eyes."
The instant Ningning opened her mouth, she was spouting bald-faced truths.
This maxed-stat body of hers did indeed have very good eyes, but nowhere near good enough to spot a high-grade magic crystal tucked into a corner without so much as a glance.
The only reason Ningning could keep turning up high-grade crystals hidden in every nook and cranny was that she remembered every single investigation point in that eroge from her past life.
In her memory, this utterly unremarkable corner practically glowed gold, hello!
If Baiye had failed to find the treasure, that would've been the real miracle.
Ningning smiled faintly and turned to look deeper into the mine tunnel.
If she remembered right, following this route down would bring them, before long, to this mine's boss-fight arena.
That boss wasn't especially strong, but it'd be a bit much to have Baiye fight it alone.
So Ningning turned and asked Baiye, who was busy packing up her bag:
"Baiye, how many magic crystals have we picked up?"
"Nine in total. Sold at market price, they'd fetch a hundred-plus gold coins. That much money is definitely more than enough."
Baiye set down her bag, counted the crystals inside, and answered.
Ningning immediately tilted her head up smugly and thrust out her chest, her nose practically pointing at the sky:
"Heh heh, how about it? Follow me around and it's nothing but the good life, right? Well, why aren't you praising me yet?"
"Mm, of course. Ningning, you really did a great service today."
Baiye gave a thumbs-up, but Ningning wasn't having it:
"Wrong, wrong! You're supposed to praise me for being brilliant and clever, adorable and darling, so lovely that fish sink and geese fall, that the moon hides and flowers blush..."
What were all those last phrases supposed to be...
They were true enough, but they had nothing to do with Ningning's contribution today, did they?
And yet, however much Baiye nitpicked in her heart, an indulgent little smile crept onto her iceberg face without her permission:
"All right, all right, shall we head back, then?"
"Mm, haul's full to bursting. Time to go home and catch up on sleep!"
With that, Ningning yawned and pushed Baiye off in the direction they'd come.
As she was shoved along, Baiye silently calculated in her heart the uses for this windfall:
With these hundred gold coins, they'd surely have enough to support all five of them leaving Tati City for the kingdom's frontier town — Maple Leaf Town.
More than a month of toiling in this city hadn't been for nothing. The Hero's Party had finally taken rough shape, and could set out at last... couldn't it?
No, she had the nagging feeling that with a party of surreal freaks like this, they'd get inexplicably ground to bits the moment they stepped out of Tati City.
Before Baiye could even begin the left-brain-versus-right-brain debate with herself, she heard Ningning behind her suddenly whisper a warning:
"Baiye, stop a second. Something's up."
Baiye instantly drew the short blade at her waist and took a stance, on guard against any enemy that might be near:
"What is it?"
"There are voices up ahead."
Ningning listened in silence for a moment, then said in a low voice.
Baiye frowned and listened carefully, and sure enough she caught several voices, some coarse, some shrill, drifting from the tunnel ahead:
"Slow as death! Move it, snap to it. Forget the debt you owe us?"
"Boss, way I see it this little chick's slacking off on purpose. A good beating'll fix her."
"Yeah, yeah."
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry..."
Baiye listened a while, then said in a low voice to Ningning:
"Sounds like other adventurers."
"Careful. In a place like this with limited visibility, never let your guard down until you've seen them in the flesh."
"Why?" Baiye asked.
"Because there are monsters that can mimic human voices and disguise themselves as adventurers."
With that, Ningning took Baiye's hand and pulled her into a branching fork of the tunnel.
Baiye didn't object, hiding with Ningning in the shadows and waiting quietly.
The two of them held their breath, pressed flat against the cold rock wall.
Footsteps and voices drew from far to near, accompanied by the dull scrape of dragged ore.
Soon, a four-person party of three men and one woman appeared in the main tunnel.
The three men were strapping and burly, each carrying a bulging sack of ore, weapons slung carelessly at their waists, impatient, ferocious looks on their faces.
And walking at the very back was a young girl in a novice White Mage's robe, washed white and covered in patches.
Slender, almost completely blocked from view by the three men ahead, she carried an enormous ore sack that looked heavier than she was, stumbling along, the chestnut bangs at her brow already soaked through with sweat.
"Hurry up! Drop that sack on the ground again and I won't let it slide!"
The scar-faced man walking in front of the girl suddenly turned back mid-stride and cursed her viciously.
"S-sorry... I'll speed up right away..."
The girl's voice was faint, thick with tears; she tried to quicken her pace, only to nearly trip over a rock at her feet.
"Useless!" Another man, bald, spat on the ground. "Boss, I say she's dragging our pace on purpose!"
"I'm not... I really tried my best..."
The girl's voice was all but drowned out by the scrape of the ore.
The man called Boss, a one-eyed brute, walked at the very front, and at this only gave a cold snort, not even turning his head:
"Hmph, so this is your so-called 'best.' Lucky for you that you ran into us; otherwise, tell me, what adventurer party would ever want useless trash like you?!"
"Y-yes..."
Seeing the girl so meek, Scar-face and Baldy nodded along and, as one, broke into a chorus of malicious jeering.
Baiye's fist clenched in an instant.
The temperature in her grey eyes dropped to freezing, her body went taut, and she made to step out from the shadows.
At this crucial, hair-trigger moment—
A pair of soft yet unnaturally firm hands suddenly reached over from the side, clamping hard over her mouth and locking around her waist.
"Mmph?!"
Baiye startled and instinctively tried to struggle, only to find Ningning's strength astonishingly great, one arm locked around her like an iron hoop, the other covering her mouth and nose so completely she couldn't make a single sound.
Baiye's eyes went wide in shock, and she was about to break free when the corner of her eye caught Ningning giving her a gentle shake of the head.
In her gaze, besides the cold resolve, there was also a trace of pleading.
So Baiye set aside, for now, the notion of breaking free, and stayed hidden in the shadows.
The adventurer party, meanwhile, hadn't the faintest idea, and, bickering and cursing, walked on down the main tunnel and gradually into the distance.
The girl's heavy panting and the men's crude abuse faded together into the depths of the tunnel.
Only when the sounds had utterly vanished did Ningning slowly release her grip and let out a long breath.
"Ningning, what are you doing?"
The moment Baiye was free, she pressed her voice low and demanded, unable to contain the fury in her heart:
"You saw it, didn't you? They were abusing that girl! Forcing her into hard labor! That is absolutely not ordinary teammate friction!"
But there was no expression on Ningning's face:
"Of course I saw it."
"Then why did you stop me?"
Ningning lifted her eyes and looked straight into Baiye's, which blazed with the flame of justice:
"Because we only heard one side of the story."
"'A debt's a debt,' those were their exact words. Their attitude was vile, yes, but if it really is a debt dispute, then barging in would make us the ones being unreasonable, and it'd damage the Hero's Party's reputation."
"Did that girl look like she was there of her own free will?!" Baiye pointed in the direction they'd vanished, her voice trembling with rage. "She was scared out of her mind!"
"Being scared doesn't mean she's done nothing wrong." Ningning's voice was calm to the point of near cruelty. "And besides, Baiye, we came here today to make money, not to play champion of justice."
"Sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong usually just brings the fire down on yourself."
"Even granting your point, with your strength you could easily beat those three men. But what then? What happens to the girl's debt? Do you pay it? What about her future? Do you support her?"
Baiye was momentarily stumped by Ningning's barrage of questions, but the surge of indignation in her chest only grew fiercer:
"So just because it's troublesome, because the future's uncertain, we turn a blind eye to the bullying right in front of us?"
Ningning sighed, knowing Baiye's stubborn streak had flared up, and that no one alive could talk her down:
"Then what do you intend to do? Charge out and beat them up, then take the girl away? Have her travel with our party? Baiye, we can't even support ourselves."
"At least... at least we should find out what's really going on!" Baiye insisted. "If it's genuinely just a debt, maybe we can find a way to lend her a hand. And if it's malicious bullying, there's no way I can stand by and do nothing!"
Looking at the unshakable resolve in Baiye's eyes, Ningning knew any further persuasion was useless.
She figured she understood Baiye pretty well — a stubborn, mule-headed captain with an almost naive sense of justice running through her very bones.
See injustice on the road, draw your blade to help, it had all but become instinct for her.
"...Fine." Ningning could only pinch the bridge of her nose and give in. "Let's quietly follow and listen, see if we can pick up more information, then decide."
"Good!..."
Baiye's face had just brightened a few shades when Ningning added:
"But you have to promise me: absolutely no rash moves! Everything comes second to our own safety."
"I know my limits." Baiye nodded at once.
Having reached a consensus, the two of them immediately set off after the party, following in the direction it had gone without a sound.
Baiye, an assassin with peerless speed and a heart burning with urgency, quickly left Ningning behind on her own.
Ningning could only walk along slowly at the back, minding the obstacles in the tunnel while trying to catch up as fast as she could.
But for some reason, as she kept following, she suddenly felt, once again, that this tunnel seemed somewhat familiar—
Huh?
Again?
Uh-oh!
Ningning hurriedly quickened her pace, and just as she was about to call out Baiye's name, she heard a few faint screams come from the tunnel ahead.
Crap, too late.
That adventurer party had probably already run into the boss of this "Gloomdepths Mine" dungeon.