My Glasses

Chapter 181 – Glasses boy and the hunting festival – part three

(Adyll’s PoV)

“Okay, let’s calm down for a bit.” I stepped in-between Beckenberg and Tatsunami.

Considering what this boy’s most likely intentions are with giving the Dragon Fish away to Tatsunami for free, he must be searching for whatever opportunity he can find to escape this place as quickly as possible.

Therefore… “Elle, you can go now.” My top priority is to help him leave this plaza before he thinks that this is way too much of a hassle and runs away from everything related to the festival.

“Hey, Adyll! We’re not done talking yet-!” Beckenberg exclaimed.

I decided to ignore him and instead continued talking to the kid, “However, please remember to show up tomorrow at noon, when the hunting festival ends.

“We’ll be announcing the results and hold an awards ceremony.

“It may feel like a hassle to you, but you’re still a participant, so make sure to fulfill your responsibility.”

“… I understand. I’ll come back tomorrow by noon.

“Then, please excuse me.” The kid said with an expressionless face, but I’m pretty sure he was actually reluctant to agree to this.

That said, this boy has strong principles and a strong sense of responsibility, so I’m sure he’ll be back.

“Hey, hag! What are you doing without permission!?” A certain annoyance shouted at me, but I silenced him with a cold glance.

“I suppose you were planning on asking her to tell you more about her epic hunt? To create a bard’s tale with her fighting techniques and her hunting methods?” I asked Beckenberg.

“S-so what!? It was going to be exciting!” He replied.

“You may enjoy being flashy and standing out, but some people dislike this kind of thing. Moreover…” I glared hard at him in this moment, “Are you seriously going to ask her about her Gift in front of other people? Or do you actually think that she didn’t use her Gift in this hunt? There’s no way she’ll be able to reveal any details of her hunt no matter how you ask her.”

Beckenberg seemed to finally understand it now.

He was a non-combatant, so he must have not given it much thought.

If I had simply stayed in the sidelines while this fool asked the kid all sorts of troublesome questions, we might have ended up without a winner tomorrow during the awards ceremony. It would have surely been a mess.

That kid hunted the mythical Dragon Fish. Of course everyone would like to hear more about how he found and hunted it.

But it would surely be something that requires the kid to disclose his Gift, so even if the kid actually wanted to talk about the hunt, he would never do it.

I’m sure that even Beckenberg would do the same if his position and the kid’s were reversed. He would decide that talking about his Gift was simply not worth it.

And well, if people started persistently asking the kid this kind of question, he’d definitely consider this to be too troublesome and would end up running away.

One should not talk about Gifts lightly.

It’s an unspoken rule that even a scoundrel like Beckenberg follows.

If one is able to think this far, anyone should be able to understand that telling the kid to leave, but come back tomorrow was the right decision.

… And while me and Beckenberg had our small argument, Tatsunami moved on ahead to see the Dragon Fish from up close.

******

(Beckenberg’s PoV)

“Quiet! Quiet! As you all can see, the brave hunter has returned from her hunt and killed a majestic Demon Beast! This is the famous Dragon Fish!” I exclaimed to the loud crowd.

As my speech went on, the crowd cheered it multiple times.

Meanwhile, Adyll and Tatsunami seemed to have finished their business here, so they retreated from the plaza.

And from that point on, things went mostly like we had predicted.

At evening and at night, we could see blue and red smoke signals being raised here and there.

The recovery teams were busy, but as the festival will continue throughout the day tomorrow, they should be able to enjoy it after tomorrow’s noon, when the competition ends.

As for my fears, they were half right.

The peak of the festival was indeed when the Dragon Fish was brought in, but the excitement didn’t dwindle as much as I had expected.

It’s something simple that I had forgotten, as even though I’m a non-combatant, I still buy Demon Beast corpses on a daily bases.

As in, most people who don’t know how to fight have never seen a Demon Beast’s whole body. Not even the common ones, like the Demon Pig and the Destroyer Horse.

They may have seen their flesh and bones after dismantling or cooking, but there are very rare opportunities for the common folk to see Demon Beasts in their whole forms.

After all, the common folk basically never leaves Krozheit.

So, even when Demon Beasts I see often were brought back, the crowd still cheered them on.

Essentially, they were now able to sate their curiosity on questions like, ‘what do the Demon Beasts that we eat the meat of, or use the magic cores of on a daily basis look like?’

There was a surprisingly large number of people who only found out the answers to these questions during this hunting festival.

They could now understand that there were people who hunted gigantic creatures who were bigger and stronger than humans. Creatures who could cause us serious injuries from simply colliding with us.

The presence and oppressive feeling given out by the vivid Demon Beast corpses right in front of the common folk ended up being way more appealing than stuff like the stories of heroes that they heard in fairy tales.

There was just something unique about being able to feel the instinctual fear that overtakes you when you see this kind of creature in the flesh.

It was an unexpected, but quite welcome byproduct of the festival.

I guess my impression of the wild savages that are the hunters has risen a bit today.

******

(Lisse’s PoV)

Early in the evening, me and Chace returned to the city after we finished our hunt.

“You’re finally back. I guess it must have been tough?” A gatekeeper asked us.

“Yeah…” I muttered.

It was certainly tough. Both me and Chace were exhausted and covered in ash.

… I was unsure if I should participate or not right until the last minute before the competition started.

I happened to meet up with my old friends, Eorazel and Hariatan, who I had promised to meet again at the Tower of Bryne, so I went to the plaza with them.

Furthermore, they also joined up with the cat therianthrope, Traululu. She was not someone I had ever met before though. She’s apparently an assassin trainee that came from a different place.

But well, after that I met up with Chace and found out that he was going to participate by himself, so I decided to team up with him to balance things out a bit.

And also because Chace didn’t seem to even understand the rules that well.

From what I heard, Tatsunami half-forced Chace to participate by saying something like, ‘Let’s fight, you bastard’ and before Chace even understood what was going on, this huge hunting festival was prepared, and he completely lost his motivation.

In fact, Chace seemed to have even forgotten who he was competing against, because he simply didn’t care much. He was told that his spear would be made regardless of him winning or losing, so his motivation to participate was incredibly half-hearted.

At the end of the day, Chace basically spends all of his spare time training. He understands that he still has a long way to go, so I guess he feels like he is not in any position to enjoy a festival, as he could be training instead of hunting.

I guess I can kinda understand what he feels to some extent. I mean… I’m sure that the ‘maid’ that was his competitor had wanted to run away at some points when he saw how big this whole festival had become.

Both him and Chace would have probably taken this better if it was a simple small-scale competition that could be completed quickly, but that was absolutely not the case right now.

So well, because of this kind of thing, I decided to team up with Chace.

Especially because, even if Chace didn’t know it, I knew. His opponent in this competition was Eil.

While we hunted together in the assassins’ village, Eil was never serious.

I could understand where he came from though.

In a hectic battlefield with multiple comrades and Demon Beasts fighting one another, having someone who could calmly look at the fight from a safe location and intervene when necessary was very reassuring.

Him taking a step back or two to let others take the front stage is probably natural for Eil.

“Whoa! It’s an Ash Cat!” One person exclaimed.

“And there are two of them-!

“Hey! It’s my turn now!” Another person exclaimed.

The crowd got quite cheerful when seeing us return with our prey… Well, they probably did that when seeing any hunter return though.

I started thinking back on our hunt a bit… It would have surely been a lot easier if Eil was with us.

We thought it was just a lone Ash Cat and launched a surprise attack against it, but then another unexpectedly appeared and we had to deal with them both at the same time.

With me and Chace having each to deal with one Ash Cat, it ended up being quite the difficult battle.

… More than that though, I really wanted to find out how strong Eil can be when he gets serious.

At first I was just curious about it, but it’s now a bit different.

… Because I saw his fight with Zett… And at that moment, I really felt like I had truly lost.

Noticing that he is just that above me made me feel quite frustrated as his rival, but at the same time, I could also feel a bit proud of him as his friend.

However, opportunities like this one, where I could see his real potential, are rare.

But it seemed like he had made some sort of promise with Adyll, so he was going at it seriously.

I wanted to compete against Eil when he was serious.

I actually wanted to see what he was going to do from up close, if possible, but he really didn’t seem to want it, so I gave up on teaming up with him.

But I still didn’t want to miss this opportunity, so I wanted to participate.

And also… I really was worried about Chace.

He really seemed to be completely unmotivated for this. To the point he could actually put himself in danger.

At several times I had to hold myself back from saying, ‘Be a bit more serious, you’re competing against Eil here.’

I really wanted to tell him that, but… Eil was in disguise, hiding his true identity. I couldn’t expose him like that.

Our hunt would have probably gone better if Chace had been more motivated, but… Well, that’s that. It’s too late to worry about that now anyways.

“Hey, is the maid girl back yet?” I asked someone who seemed to be in charge of managing the hunted prey, as he seemed to be paying quite a bit of attention to the movement around the Ash Cats we hunted.

If Eil was serious about it, then it wouldn’t be surprising if he came back a long time ago. He is way more of an assassin than I am, after all.

Also… When it comes to hunting, he is probably stronger alone.

“Ah, yeah. She was the first one, in fact.

“She seems to have gone home because she was tired, but the Demon Beast that she hunted is in the warehouse over there.” The man pointed to a building.

… And a huge crowd was surrounding said building. There seemed to be restrictions on how many people could enter at a time, and a waiting list that you had to sign to if you wanted to enter.

The man laughed as he saw my reaction, “If you’re gonna see it, you better brace yourselves so that you don’t lose your hearts.”