WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 75

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Request for Help

Rombel said, his voice grim, "How much longer do we have to walk?"

Dwarves had short legs, so long-distance travel wore them out fast, and their thick beards and stocky builds meant they hated humid or hot places.

And right now, Rombel had to walk through a place that was both humid and hot for a long stretch.

He didn't even know how much farther they had to go.

Any other dwarf would have flopped down on the ground and said to hell with it by now.

There was exactly one reason Rombel kept walking without complaint through all this.

He was afraid that if the Chief God happened to be watching him, they might click their tongue and strike his name off the list of "candidates for the next god."

But it was clear now that Rombel had hit his limit.

Elbridge deliberately offered a hopeful opinion.

"They say it's darkest before the dawn. We're tired now, but maybe the Great Forest ends if we walk a little farther?"

"I feel like I heard that same line a few days ago."

"Maybe the night's just a little long. Like a winter night..."

Just a few days ago, Rombel would have laughed that off heartily. But now, he felt like their situation was getting worse bit by bit.

Even the hard biscuits they'd gotten from the village were nearly gone.

Sending their guide off and then getting lost. On the surface, it probably looked idiotic.

But Elbridge's group did have an excuse.

They weren't familiar with the Great Forest, but they were reasonably experienced travelers. They knew how to gauge direction using the sun and stars, and they knew how to find their way through a forest.

They'd even kept walking in the direction Isalvius had pointed them before he left. And still, they couldn't get out of the Great Forest.

Eventually, Rombel stopped walking.

"No. Something's definitely wrong here, no matter how you look at it. Remember what Isalvius told us before?"

"What did he say?"

"That foreign merchants sometimes wander into the Great Forest, get lost, and die."

Marcus's expression turned serious.

"Don't say ominous stuff like that, Rombel."

"Marcus, I'm not trying to scare you for no reason. I'm saying we should actually think about this. Do you really think those merchants died because they didn't know how to keep walking in one direction, or how to retrace their steps? We need to find some other way to think about this."

"You got any good ideas...?"

"Nothing comes to mind right away. But one thing's for sure. Instead of just wandering around blindly, we need to actually think first."

It was a fair point, and their stomachs happened to be growling at just the right moment.

The three of them started preparing a meal, each lost in their own thoughts.

Elbridge glanced at Marcus now and then, half hoping the God of Fox Rain might drop some kind of answer.

But the God of Fox Rain gave no oracle. Whether the god was busy, or simply had no way to help, Elbridge couldn't tell.

Dinner that evening was a handful of bramble berries picked along the way, a few bird eggs, and some tiny fish Marcus had caught from a stream.

When Marcus lit a fire to grill the fish, smoke billowed up in thick clouds.

Marcus turned his head away from the smoke, grumbling.

"I hate the wood in this forest. So much moisture in it, all it does is smoke. And the fire stays lukewarm like smoldering embers instead of actually burning..."

Rombel's eyes lit up at that.

"What if we set the Great Forest on fire?"

"...What kind of insane idea is that?"

Elbridge shot him a look, but Rombel actually seemed fairly serious.

"People stranded in the wild light fires too, right? If smoke rises from the forest, won't someone come looking?"

"But if a forest fire breaks out, people run away from it. Besides, you can't just set a fire wherever you want. You know how much moisture is in the wood here."

"No, I don't think that matters. People don't even need to come rescue us. I just want to see this damn forest burn to the ground..."

Just as Rombel was about to spiral into more unhinged talk, the Goddess of the Rusted Shield sent down an oracle, for the first time in a while.

- Elbridge.

Elbridge cut Rombel off so his cheap talk wouldn't offend the goddess's ears.

"Rombel, stay quiet. The goddess is about to give an oracle. Goddess. Your faithful knight Elbridge is ready to receive your oracle."

- More polite than usual, aren't we, Elbridge.

"I have always been so, Goddess."

Elbridge quietly hoped for something more. Was the goddess about to tell him which way to go?

- Elbridge. Not far from here, someone prayed to your goddess and asked for help.

Elbridge's ears perked up.

There were no believers of the Order of the Rusted Shield in the Great Forest.

But that didn't mean no one could pray to the Goddess of the Rusted Shield.

Someone truly desperate for help would grab at any straw, praying to whatever god happened to come to mind.

If they were lucky enough that a god was listening, they might actually receive divine help.

A kind of random distress call, in other words.

And as Elbridge saw it, this distress call had a good chance of helping his own group too.

"The goddess says there's someone nearby asking for help."

"We're supposed to go help them? We're the ones who need help right now..."

Unlike the grumbling Rombel, Marcus understood Elbridge's intent immediately.

"We should go right away. How do we know that person won't turn out to be our guide?"

"You think so?"

"At the very least, we've got nothing to lose. It's not like things could get much worse than they already are."

"Hm."

Rombel fell into thought.

He'd been grumbling because he wasn't happy with the situation, but answering this distress call was actually good for him too.

Rombel's goal was Ascension. And the first step toward Ascension was catching the Chief God's eye.

If he wanted to make an impression on the Chief God, he needed to get tangled up in as many situations as possible. Like that business with the Order of the God of Flowing Water not long ago.

Rombel chewed on his slightly burnt grilled fish and got to his feet.

"Fine. Let's go."

Elbridge prayed to the goddess as they moved through the Great Forest.

"Goddess. Which way should we go from here?"

- Just keep going the way you're currently facing, Elbridge.

"Might I ask what kind of trouble the person asking for help is facing?"

- Your goddess only heard a short prayer. But they clearly mentioned a stampede.

Elbridge was thoroughly rattled. Hadn't the stampede already ended?

Marcus noticed Elbridge's unease.

"Sir Elbridge. What did she say?"

"A stampede..."

"What? Wasn't that already over and done with?"

"I'm not sure."

Rombel hesitated.

"Are we actually going to help by going there? If we just end up getting dragged into it for nothing, I'm not thrilled about that."

Unlike Elbridge, who had borrowed the goddess's divine power and managed to do more than his share in the last stampede, Rombel hadn't been able to do a thing. A stampede wasn't something one person could handle.

"I'd rather fight a demon, honestly. But in front of a stampede, there's nothing I can do. You know that."

"...We still have to go and see."

That was all Elbridge could say.

The goddess's divine power wasn't limitless, and the most Elbridge could manage was delaying a stampede a little.

Still, the three of them moved briskly. Arriving even a little earlier could mean fewer casualties. Even if they couldn't stop a stampede, there was still a chance they could pull people out and get them away safely.

A little while later, Elbridge's group came upon a strange sight.

"This is... a stampede? Is it?"

There, they found a small village ringed not by a stone wall but by a wooden palisade. A village small enough to hold maybe a few dozen people at most.

And an uncountable number of wild boars.

If the standard for a stampede was the density of wild boars, then this was, without question, a stampede.

Grunt.

Except the wild boars' eyes weren't rolled back in blind fury, and they weren't rampaging around trying to trample everything in sight.

They wandered about lazily, as if it were any other day, letting out the occasional dull grunt.

The wild boars couldn't even get over the sharpened palisade into the village.

Seeing that, Rombel seemed to relax and grew visibly braver.

"Something happened here, that much is clear. Let's find out what."

Elbridge's group pushed their way through the wild boars blocking the path and approached the village.

As they reached the palisade, a woman's voice called out from inside the village.

"Can't open the gate for you right now, so climb in however you can manage!"

Elbridge and Marcus could carefully scale the palisade, but Rombel was too short to climb over the sharp stakes with any ease. Elbridge simply threw Rombel over the wall.

"Oof!"

Following Rombel's less-than-graceful landing, Elbridge and Marcus climbed into the village as well.

The woman who had called out to them was watching Elbridge's group.

She looked to be a little past thirty. Wearing a somewhat grimy apron, she looked every bit like an ordinary village housewife.

The woman held out a hand roughened enough to rival any man's and offered a handshake to Elbridge's group.

"The village is in such a mess, and yet here you are, coming right into it. What brought you here?"

Elbridge took her hand and said, "The goddess sent down an oracle. She said someone asking for help was near here."

The woman looked more than a little surprised at that.

"Goodness. I prayed on the off chance, but it looks like a god actually heard me. Which church are you from? The Blind Guardian? The Fifth Coffer?"

"I'm Elbridge, of the Order of the Rusted Shield. This is Marcus, of the Order of the God of Fox Rain. And that dwarf over there is Rombel."

"Ah, the Order of the Rusted Shield... I only heard the name for the first time earlier this year, and here you are answering my prayer. Must be a fine god."

The Goddess of the Rusted Shield never let a compliment pass her by unnoticed.

- That woman has quite good judgment, Elbridge. If the chance comes up, it might be worth encouraging her to join the church.

"I will do so."

While Elbridge offered a quiet prayer, the woman introduced herself.

"I'm Masa. Village chief here."

"Village chief."

It was extremely rare for a woman to hold the position of village chief.

Seeing Elbridge's group's reaction, Masa laughed heartily.

"My father was the village chief. After he passed, I filled in for a while, and since no one else wanted to take over, it just ended up staying this way."

"I see."

Even during their brief exchange, the wild boars' dull grunting never let up.

Elbridge asked Masa, "By the way, Masa. Was it those wild boars you were asking for help about?"

"Yes, that's right. Those things ate up every crop we'd planted around the village. Corn, beans, all of it."

"You seem fairly calm about all this, Masa."

"They've been swarming around for quite a while now. I'm a bit used to it by now, but when they first showed up, it was chaos."

Masa crossed her arms and lowered her voice.

"...Honestly, I've just been putting on a brave face for the village folks. Things are pretty bad. Merchants can't get through because of those things, and our own people can't go outside either. Nobody sleeps at night. We're all afraid those boars might suddenly turn and go on a rampage. If they do that, everyone in this village dies."

Marcus asked Masa, "Masa. Do you happen to know when those wild boars first showed up?"

"Let's see. About two weeks ago? Maybe a bit more than two weeks."

Elbridge's group exchanged glances.

If the wild boars had come swarming this way after the last stampede, the timing lined up more or less.

"Any idea why they'd be swarming this particular way?"

"Because of my beauty, maybe?"

Masa said that while blinking her big eyes a couple of times, and somehow, the gesture suited her oddly well.

Some people were like that. The more dire the situation, the more they tried to lighten the mood.

Masa seemed to be exactly that type.

"..."

"Kidding, kidding. Honestly, I don't know the real reason either."

"Nothing at all comes to mind?"

"Hmm..."

"It's not like we can just chase those wild boars off by force either. We need to know the cause to solve the problem. Of course, even knowing the cause doesn't guarantee we can solve it."

Masa thought it over carefully, then started listing things as they came to her.

"Our village sits by the clearest stream around here. Plenty of water, and there's a marsh nearby where wild boars like to wallow. And... the past few years, not many wild boars came through, so there's probably plenty of food for them too."

The odds that Masa's guesses were the actual answer weren't high.

An unusual phenomenon usually had an unusual cause behind it.

Besides, even if Masa's guesses turned out to be right, there wasn't much Elbridge's group could do about it anyway.

Just then, a thought occurred to Elbridge.

Once a stampede ended, did the wild boars naturally swarm here afterward?

"Masa. Has something like this happened before, with the wild boars swarming like this?"

"Never. This is the first time anything like this has happened."

"Hm."

Bireone had said the last stampede happened roughly twenty or thirty years ago.

If it were a natural flow for the boars to swarm here after a stampede ended, the village folks surely would have remembered it.

"Was there anything else out of the ordinary? Anything strange?"

"Let's see. Nothing major comes to mind... Oh, now that you mention it. A little while back, some of the local kids said something strange."

"What did they say?"

"They said they saw an elf in the forest. You know, that long-eared race."

"Hmm."

Elbridge and Rombel's reactions were lukewarm at best. Elves lived in the north of the continent, not the south.

Even in the north, running into an elf wasn't easy. Elves were famously reclusive, rarely leaving their own settlements.

In conclusion, the odds were high that the kids had either lied or been mistaken about seeing an elf.

'There's probably some other reason.'

Elbridge asked again.

"Masa. Is there really nothing else you can think of? Especially anything unusual that happened last year or earlier this year."

"Nothing in particular comes to... Oh! There is one thing."

"What is it?"

Masa propped her chin on her hand and said, "My beauty, ripening even further with age?"

Elbridge decided he would go take a look around the village himself.

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