第２７３堀：厄介な事には隠し札 (Part1)
Chapter 273: Hidden Cards for Troublesome Times
Side: Mauve, Weed Adventurer Guild Exclusive
We were lounging around the guard station in the demi-human village—or whatever you’d call it—just like any other day.
After finishing our early morning training, Raiya, Curse, and I, who are treated as the heads of the self-defense force, spend our days stuck at the station, ready to handle any issues that might arise in the village.
It’s incredibly boring.
It feels like being an adventurer guild member assigned to a specific city.
The work is pretty much the same, and the scale... well, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
The guild sends you all over the place for requests, and the village has a wide area of operation, too.
But since there isn't a constant stream of trouble, when we have downtime like this, we’re bored to the point of death.
"Waaaaaaahhh!!"
That sound came from the black object fitted with a thin glass plate.
Right, Yuki installed a television here to help us kill time.
I’ve learned how to use things like DVDs, so it’s perfect for passing the hours, but it’s a dangerous piece of tech—if you start watching something, you might forget to go back to Weed and end up pulling an all-nighter.
Well, today it’s actually useful, as Yuki and the others are broadcasting the duel festival from the Academy.
Apparently, they’re experimenting with a live broadcast, sending whatever the video camera captures directly to the TV.
They asked us to watch it to see if there were any issues.
Something about how mana has a better transmission rate than radio waves? Zargis was rambling on about magic-based transmission protocols or something...
"Well, that was a heated match, but it’s only just begun!! Please look forward to the next match, the second of the day!!"
"We will now take a 30-minute break, so please use this time to visit the restrooms. If you are feeling unwell, please head to the infirmary..."
I don’t need the details. I don’t really get it.
Things like that are best left to the experts.
As long as I know which button to press to watch TV or a DVD, that’s enough for me.
It’s a matter of the right person for the right job.
"Hey, Mauve. I bought the extra supplies from Weed."
"Here you go, Mauve-san. Beer."
"Oh, thanks."
Raiya and Curse, who had gone out for supplies, returned.
They say "extra supplies," but as you can tell from them calling it a "shopping run," it’s mostly stuff for personal use.
Guns and those "surprise-attack" weapons are always managed and restocked by Steve’s subordinates.
Actually, even though we call this a "demi-human village," it’s the only place in this New Continent that has a secret, direct connection to a dungeon.
The large-scale military dungeon run by Mino-chan and John is already known to Enaria, and Mino-chan and the others are currently negotiating with them.
Because of that, Mino-chan’s dungeon is strictly a place where the common sense of this New Continent applies.
In other words, on the surface, they only have bows, arrows, and ballistae.
Of course, they keep weapons in reserve for emergencies, but they aren't deployed as openly as they are in this village.
No, wait—it’s more accurate to say they’re deployed in the dungeon, not the village.
The village and the dungeon are effectively separate organizations.
We’ve been dispatched here under the guise of "protection," but the villagers aren't allowed to enter the dungeon facilities, nor can they break in.
It would be dangerous in more ways than one if they could.
"What? So only Yuki’s match is over?"
Raiya mutters as he looks at the TV.
"What do you mean? I thought it would be over quickly. Were you watching, Mauve-san?"
Curse asks with a puzzled look.
"Yeah, Yuki was doing all sorts of things. I don’t know what his actual goal was, but to me, it looked like he was prioritizing stalling for time and making it easy to understand."
"I get the stalling part, but what do you mean by 'easy to understand'?"
"You know. Instead of using his usual incomprehensible abilities to incapacitate the opponent, Yuki was doing something like a hand-to-hand brawl."
"Is that so? I suppose finishing it in an instant as a spectacle would be a problem in its own right."
"Exactly. Since it’s meant to be a show, if he doesn't overwhelm and defeat his opponent in a flashier, more understandable way, the crowd will just boo."
"We’ve had our fair share of trouble in other lands, too."
"True. Even when we were called out, we were just an unknown adventurer party to them. Even if the guild masters knew our abilities and track record, it’s not a pleasant story for the guys working at the local adventurer guild."
"They introduce us with the title of 'Hero of Defense,' but we’re just a bunch of middle-aged guys."
"They see us as having stepped back from the front lines because we’re 'exclusive' staff."
"Well, even if we were young, that would be a problem too. That’s why every time someone had a complaint, Mauve-san would just blow them away in a duel to make it clear."
While we chatted, the two of them put the items they bought into the refrigerator.
"Anyway, it’s interesting to watch for different reasons. Want to watch it together?"
"Sure. The shopping’s done, and I don’t have anything else to do."
"Indeed. I assumed it was already over, but if it’s still going, I’ll watch. Besides, the whole point of the shopping trip was to watch the DVD later anyway."
Curse says this and hands me a bento box he picked at random.
"It’s break time, so let’s eat. Oh, a steak bento?"
"Yeah, you like those, right?"
"Oh yeah."
I take out my chopsticks and start eating the bento immediately.
Man, it’s delicious, even if it is just a bento.
Well, it doesn't last long, so it’s different from portable rations.
But it’s still way better than the hard bread we used to eat.
"Still, I wonder why we’re the ones on standby here. I don’t mean we should have been taken to the Academy, but looking back at everything..."
I say what’s on my mind while eating.
"If we had been out there, there would have been some situations that could have been handled more properly. Especially with the scouting of the cities, or maybe we wouldn't have gotten tangled up with that Magic Sword-wielding princess, right?"