I did not tell Luna to stop.
No, I could not.
As the commotion spread in waves, low-level monsters prowled nearby, and since we were in a situation where they might attack us at any moment, the priority was to leave the monster-infested area as quickly as possible.
On top of that, the variable of the blond man... Krol, remained openly present.
The appearance of high-level monsters that should not exist here. Krol might have been the one who had arranged it.
If Krol had secretly pulled some trick, then the fact that Grenda had been taken down absurdly quickly made sense.
The time Luna and I took to bring down one Ogre Kong had been barely thirty seconds or so.
While we were focused on one Ogre Kong, Krol might have pulled something on Grenda from our blind spot.
“Huff! Huff! Huff!”
Most of all, Luna was breathing roughly and running with difficulty.
In the form of a Ghost Tiger, perhaps worried that strength might enter the mouth holding me, she delicately adjusted the force of her jaw each time she jumped.
Foam gathered at both corners of her mouth.
Her thighs burned hot like an overheated engine.
Her breathing was irregular and rough.
She placed securing my safety as the top priority.
As if everything else was not even worth considering.
Because I could continually feel through my skin that Luna was squeezing out her strength for my sake, I could not bring myself to act emotionally over Grenda’s matter.
Through Luna, I keenly realized that acting emotionally in this situation would itself be childishness.
How long had we run?
When we escaped the monster-infested area and reached a point where the village south of Volter Mountain came into view.
Luna staggered and set me down on the ground. Then she returned to her original form and leaned against a tree.
“Haah, haah. Since we have come this far... it should be all right.”
Even while exhausted, she crossed her arms and struck a pose as if nothing were wrong. That was very like Luna.
They really were siblings after all.
When it came to trying to look cool, she was exactly like Nadan.
I closed my eyes deeply, opened them, and sorted out my emotions.
“I should admit what needs admitting. I was soft.”
What happened to Grenda became an opportunity for me to change my point of view.
I had felt as if I had adapted to this other world to some extent, but I realized all over again that I had still been living with the sensibilities of my original world... and specifically, of when I lived in Korea.
Grenda had been the one who volunteered to act as bait, and it was an undeniable fact that there was little I could do in that situation.
But if I examined the facts one by one, the result that we had lost Grenda was also undeniably a fact.
I kept wondering what would have happened if I had made a better judgment, or if I had shared Grenda’s danger with her.
Get a hold of yourself.
Grenda would not return just because I sank into grief.
I had an obligation to put into action what I could do.
This incident would surely become the branch point that determined whether my journey in another world drew an upward curve or a downward curve.
“Luna, can you walk?”
“Probably.”
“No. Stay here and catch your breath. I will enter the village alone and talk with Mr. Larsson.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I will tell him what happened to Ms. Grenda. And I need to tell him there is a possibility Krol had a hand in the entire process.”
I intended to ask Larsson for his opinion, and afterward, hear what realistic measures could be taken here immediately.
Then, among the measures brought up, I planned to find out whether there was an option I could intervene in, and if there was, how far I could exert influence.
I refused to turn into a bystander while using travel as a shield.
I would not accept an ending where what I had gained through this journey was a method of acting cowardly.
When Luna sensed the atmosphere coming from me, she exhaled long to regulate her breathing.
“Phew. If you are like this now, Master, then I do not need to worry. I will wait with an easy mind.”
“Are you saying I was unreliable until now?”
“Let us say you were reliable, and now you have become even more reliable.”
“You are good with words.”
Leaving Luna behind, I entered the village south of Volter Mountain.
When I entered the village and went into Larsson’s establishment, what awaited me in the luxury inn lobby was a group of angry people.
Villagers standing there with bloodshot eyes.
Employees whose gazes were full of displeasure.
Guests from other places wearing thorny expressions.
At their head stood Larsson, his nerves sharpened by fatigue and displeasure.
As if I had arrived at just the right moment, Larsson spoke to me in an agitated voice, as if interrogating me.
“Mr. Seong-jin, you have truly returned at an astonishing moment. Just what have you been doing while wandering around?”
The friendly attitude he had shown on the first day I arrived at Volter Mountain was nowhere to be seen.
All that remained was reproach and hostility.
If it had been me before this morning, I would have been more than a little flustered.
However, I too had decided to change my stance.
A so-called mental awakening.
Their gazes became thorns and drove into my body, yet my head was cold to a degree that surprised even me.
I calmly set out to grasp the situation.
“I would like to hear what happened first.”
“Are you asking because you truly do not know?”
“Can you not see that I am waiting with my ears open?”
When I spoke firmly, Larsson flinched, then explained the circumstances in a slightly softened tone.
“As of yesterday, several water sources that had previously been fine became contaminated. As for the water sources entrusted to you, Mr. Seong-jin, far from being purified, they remain contaminated.”
“I certainly purified the designated locations over the past few days.”
“If they were purified, why are they still contaminated? And if that were all, perhaps it would be one thing, but why have even perfectly fine water sources become contaminated?”
“My thought is that someone pulled a trick from a blind spot. What conclusion did all of you reach after discussing it among yourselves?”
When I confidently stated my position, the hall stirred.
Opinions were divided among them as to whether they should say the conclusion they had hastily reached among themselves, or hear me out and judge again.
Larsson put into words the public opinion that had been mainstream until I arrived.
“The conversation we were having until just now was that you did not carry out the purification work entrusted to you, and furthermore, that you touched places you were not asked to handle with clumsy skill and caused an accident.”
“I hope there have been no casualties?”
“Thanks to us noticing in advance, we were at least able to avoid casualties. However, several private homes suffered property damage, so this cannot be passed over quietly.”
“Understood. Then I only need to prove that I performed the purification work properly.”
“You certainly should. I cannot trust your companion’s word, so I will listen to Grenda, whom I assigned to you as an escort, and judge. Where is Grenda?”
The moment Grenda was mentioned, I felt as if the area near my solar plexus had been blocked tightly.
I did not particularly like drawing out the time between blockage and release.
I declared it without hesitation.
“Grenda died in battle while escorting us.”
The hall stirred once again.
The size of the commotion was several times greater than before.
Just as the major incident of additional water source contamination had occurred in my blind spot, the major incident of Grenda’s death had occurred in the crowd’s blind spot.
Unlike me, who had remained calm even in the same situation, the crowd’s confusion lasted quite a long time.
Only Larsson recovered his senses quickly and proposed the most universal solution.
“Then I may take it that there is no one to guarantee whether you truly performed the purification work. It is difficult to make a hasty judgment on this matter here, so I will send someone to the lord’s mansion.”
When an incident occurred that was difficult for the parties involved to settle among themselves, it seemed borrowing the power of public authority was the same in this other world as it was in ours.
Thinking about it in reverse, unless a report was made, even the side holding public authority did not go out of its way to step into every matter. That was the same too.
If the procedure for handling incidents was the same, that was reassuring for me as well.
If it had been an unfamiliar method, I would not even know whether my nose had been cut off while going through the procedure.
I expressed agreement with Larsson’s proposal, but wanted to add something to it.
“When you relay this to the lord, please pass along these words. Tell him there is a possibility demons are involved in this incident.”
“Demons? Demons, you say!”
“You invited a bard a few days ago, did you not? That man is suspicious.......”
In the middle of speaking, a man walked into the lobby through the front door.
The blond man, Krol.
Krol was wearing a hooded cloak, and as he walked into the lobby, he pulled the hood back.
“I heard everything. Mr. Larsson, and residents gathered here. In place of Ms. Grenda, I will guarantee Mr. Jo Seong-jin’s innocence.”
Now what was this?
According to the flow until now, Krol had been the strongest suspect.
That very Krol had come here on his own two feet and was defending me with all his might.
Larsson immediately frowned and snapped at Krol as if dealing with someone beneath him.
“This is not a place for you to interfere. If you intend to add confusion with presumptuous words......”
Krol smiled and slipped a hand inside his cloak, took out a badge made of copper, and held it forward.
“I believe this will add some weight to my guarantee.”
The badge Krol held out was a round, flat copper plate stamped with a sun emblem surrounded by wavy lines.
It was an emblem that closely resembled the flag of the Shining Kingdom.
Larsson and the crowd packed behind him saw the badge and their mouths fell open.
“R-R-Royal Palace Knights!”
“Allow me to formally introduce myself again. I am Cross of the Royal Palace Knights.”
Krol was an alias, and his real name was Cross.
Krol, shortened from Cross.
Since he said Royal Palace Knights, my guess that he might be a demon had been a pure misunderstanding.
Larsson hurriedly lowered the position of his head beneath Cross’s.
“What brings the Royal Palace Knights here... Hah! Was pretending to be a bard an undercover investigation?”
“Calling it an undercover investigation gives it an unpleasant ring. It is nothing so serious. I came to observe because I was ordered to determine the dimension traveler’s disposition.”
I looked back on the actions Cross had shown until now and spoke.
“So you followed me to observe me.”
“And, in another sense, I was worried too.”
“Because I looked full of openings, you secretly watched my back?”
“Oh dear, I said nothing.”
He did not deny it absolutely.
If Cross was not a demon, then I had to change the way I viewed this incident.
It was not that I had been naive.
Someone had simply manipulated everything skillfully so that it looked like my fault.
The trigger that had made me judge myself naive was fixed.
Grenda’s death.
Furthermore, with Grenda disappearing, the means to prove my innocence had vanished.
What was more, Grenda had been in a position where she could very easily recontaminate the water sources I had finished purifying.
Right after I finished the purification work, all she had to do was avoid my eyes and throw contaminants into the water source.
Until now, it was all only a hypothesis.
A hypothesis only gained meaning once it was proven.
There was exactly one way to prove whether the hypothesis was correct right now.
I fixed my gaze on Cross and asked seriously.
“You watched the entire battle with the Ogre Kongs earlier, correct?”
“Yes. When I arrived, Mr. Seong-jin was just retreating. That is why I hurriedly followed you down.”
“Did you perhaps see what action the Ogre Kong that swallowed Ms. Grenda took?”
Cross touched his chin with his index finger, turned his gaze into the air, and searched his memory.
“Mm, as I recall, it gave up the pursuit and began climbing the mountain.”
Thanks to Cross’s answer, I gained certainty.
The one who was truly a demon had been Grenda.
Grenda was a demon.
If so, being eaten must also have been part of a scheme.
No, surely it had been staged to make it look as if she had been eaten.
At the time we retreated, Grenda had been alive and well inside the Ogre Kong’s body, and she must have used the Ogre Kong itself as a vehicle to head toward a remote place beyond human sight.
I had a rough guess as to where Grenda had gone.
The direction the Ogre Kong Cross mentioned had headed in matched, on the map, the direction where the hidden exploration point of the Omoreo Region was located.
Whatever kind of place this hidden exploration point was, Grenda would be there.
I closed my eyes and checked the location of the hidden exploration point.
Then, after several seconds, I opened my eyes and spoke in a sharpened voice.
“I have a guess as to where she went. Follow me. I will overturn your assessment of me.”
The assessment that had judged me full of openings, that is.