The gap between Orum's carriage and the rest of the convoy kept widening.
The decrepit wagon they had rented from Blackwater Town was an insult to the very concept of transportation.
Its body had been slapped together from the cheapest oak planks, with gaps between the boards wide enough to see the road below.
The iron-rimmed wooden wheels were badly worn, grinding out a shrill screech with every rotation, like some long-suffering office drone trudging through another miserable workday while moaning about his fate.
Worse still were the two horses pulling the cart. The chestnut on the left was visibly exhausted, its mane frost-white with age, stopping every few steps to heave great gulping breaths.
The black horse on the right was in marginally better shape, though it punctuated the journey with frequent snorts of protest, clearly fed up with this torturous long-distance haul.
The elite cavalry under Muller's command, along with the Ice Hawks Company's regulation carriage drawn by two fine horses, had long since vanished beyond the horizon. Not even a trail of dust remained.
Fortunately, Orum had a detailed map in hand.
He spread the worn sheepskin parchment across his lap and carefully cross-referenced each landmark and fork in the road. According to the markings, following this road straight north would bring them to their destination, the village of Caedia. They would arrive later than the others, but at least they wouldn't get lost.
"Orum."
Melina's careful voice drifted from the depths of the carriage, unusually distinct against the monotonous rumble of the wheels.
"Hm?"
"The people in Caedia... are they all bad people?"
The moment the question left her lips, an image of Anna flashed through Orum's mind.
The brown-haired girl imprisoned in an iron cage, once a cleric in the Shield of the Peaks party, the kind of person any village would regard with reverence. Now her eyes were glassy and hollow, like a walking corpse. The slavers had deliberately cut out her tongue, methodically dismantling her spirit and her will.
Such cruelty, so calculated and so roundabout in its viciousness, was not the work of any monster. Only humans were capable of something like this.
"In all likelihood, yes," Orum replied flatly.
The air inside the carriage seemed to solidify, leaving only the dull thudding of wheels over broken stone.
After a moment, Melina's voice rose again, this time threaded with grief she could barely contain. "I grew up in a place like that."
Through the small mirror at the front of the carriage, Orum could see her curled up in the corner, both arms wrapped tightly around her knees, the shadow of her hood blurring the pale lines of her face.
"My foster parents used me as a tool for stealing. They forced me to pilfer things from the time I was very young." Her voice began to tremble. "If I didn't steal enough in a given week, they would threaten to sell me off."
Her small body started to shake.
"I had two older sisters. That's exactly what happened to them. They were taken away, and they never came back."
Tears slid silently down her cheeks, glinting faintly in the dim carriage before dripping onto the rough wooden floor.
Orum exhaled a long breath, pulled the reins to bring the carriage to a stop at the roadside, then turned and climbed into the cab. He rummaged through the travel bag and produced a few strips of fiery red spiced fish jerky.
"Open up."
"Mmph! That's so spicy!"
The searing heat struck without mercy, erupting across Melina's taste buds like a volcanic blast. Her entire face flushed a vivid red in an instant, round and ripe as an overripe apple. The ferocious sensation successfully scattered the gloom that had been settling over her heart.
Melina frantically stuck out her tongue and fanned it with her sleeve, eyes brimming with tears, though these ones had been burned out of her by the spice rather than sorrow.
"Still sad?" Orum asked.
Melina dabbed carefully at the corners of her eyes with her cuff and complained in a soft, aggrieved murmur that she wished he wouldn't shove something that spicy into her mouth without warning next time.
"Want another piece?"
"...Yes."
The battered carriage lurched and swayed along the winding mountain road for the better part of a full day. By the time the sun sank slowly between the peaks and the distant ridgelines bled dark as spilled ink, night began its quiet descent from the edge of the sky.
Darkness spread through the hills and forests like ink soaking into parchment. From deep within the tree line came a chorus of sounds: the long, mournful howl of a wolf pack, the low rumbling growl of some unknown creature, and the eerie rustling of wind through tangled branches.
Just before the darkness swallowed the land entirely, Orum spotted light ahead by a streamside clearing. Bright against the black, it was the warm glow of the convoy's campfire.
The campsite, as before, had been chosen beside a clear mountain stream. The terrain made it easy to draw water and establish a perimeter.
At the center of the camp, a vigorous fire blazed like a lighthouse, driving back the shadows and casting its orange-red light into every crack and crevice around it. Dry wood snapped and popped in the flames with sharp, clean sounds, the most primal warmth imaginable, the kind that had soothed humanity's instinctive dread of the dark across countless ages.
Orum parked the carriage at the camp's outer edge. Inside the cab, he set Melina up with fish jerky, dark bread, and clean water, then turned to leave.
"I'm going to meet up with the captain and the others. You stay in the carriage and don't come out, no matter what."
Melina nodded obediently and pulled her hood down lower. "I understand, Orum."
He strode toward the Ice Hawks Company's section of the camp. He noted at once that Muller and his ten armed retainers were nowhere nearby. They had deliberately pitched their camp at a considerable remove from the adventurers, and the veteran knight had not spared so much as a glance in this direction the entire time, clearly intent on avoiding any unnecessary contact with the adventuring party.
"Orum! You're just in time!"
Ronald waved him over with enthusiasm, pointing his wooden ladle at a massive iron pot suspended over the campfire. "Come try this stew!"
The pot was simmering with cuts of prime Giant-Horned Ox, a formidable magical beast that lurked in the depths of primeval forests. Enormous as wild elephants, with a pair of distinctive spiraling horns crowning their heads, they were notoriously ill-tempered, yet their flesh was celebrated throughout the Southern Reaches for its unparalleled richness and flavor.
After long, careful simmering, the meat had reached a perfect, melt-in-the-mouth tenderness and taken on a deep brownish-red sheen. Potatoes and carrots had been cut into even cubes and added as sides, their warm colors complementing the glossy cuts of beef in a way that made the mouth water.
Felix lifted a piece of meat with elegant precision, examined it, then let his expression settle into quiet approval. "Genuinely the finest quality Giant-Horned Ox. The cooking time is exactly right as well."
Raygore had long since abandoned restraint and was eating with gusto. Even Felix, usually so composed in his manners, couldn't quite conceal the pleasure on his face as he enjoyed the meal.
"Muller's attitude is a bit much, don't you think?" Ronald shot a disgruntled glance toward the distant knight encampment. "We're supposed to be partners on this job, but he acts like he's watching for pickpockets."
Felix set down his ladle with quiet deliberation, his expression turning thoughtful. "Muller almost certainly comes from a formal military background. Knights who trained in professional armies tend to harbor a long-standing prejudice against adventurers as a class."
His jade-colored eyes were calm and without judgment as he explained. "In their way of thinking, adventurers represent opportunism and self-interest, qualities that sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from the loyalty and lofty honor that knighthood is supposed to embody."
Ronald let out a short, contemptuous laugh, a flash of real anger crossing his face. "But adventurers are the ones actually out there slaying monsters and protecting villages!"
He rapped his wooden bowl with a sharp knock. "Those high-and-mighty types, do you really think they lose any sleep over goblins slaughtering livestock and carrying off women?"
"Because disaster never falls on their heads! To them, it's nothing more than a few numbers on a report!"
Ronald's voice rose with mounting heat. "But to the common people in those villages, the ones actually suffering, it's the whole world caving in!"
"That's true enough," Felix said softly, and the mood fell quiet for a moment.
After Orum finished his bowl of stew, Felix withdrew a sheepskin document from inside his coat and held it out with a gravity that matched his expression. "Take a look at this, Orum. It's the security intelligence on Caedia that Muller's people passed along. It should give us a clearer picture of what we're walking into."
His manner was sober.
Orum took the document and read it line by line by the shifting light of the campfire. With each paragraph, the furrow between his brows deepened.
Two years prior, Caedia had been the site of a deeply unusual monster incursion.
The intruder was a Forest Behemoth Lizard, a creature three meters in length and weighing close to two tons.
Despite its fearsome appearance, with scales as dense and thick as iron plate, the Forest Behemoth Lizard was by nature an unusually placid creature. It sustained itself on large fruits and tender new growth in the forest and rarely initiated any attack on humans.
Yet the record showed that this particular lizard had acted completely out of character, forcing its way into Caedia and causing serious damage to buildings and farmland.
The village elders had immediately dispatched a letter to the Adventurers' Hall, posting a subjugation commission. Unfortunately, it was the height of the rainy season, adventurers were spread thin, and the commission went unanswered for an extended period.
A month later, the situation took an even stranger turn. The elders of Caedia abruptly withdrew the bounty, citing that the Forest Behemoth Lizard had vanished on its own and no longer posed any threat to the village.
On the surface, it appeared to be nothing more than a routine monster disturbance that had resolved itself quietly.
But what followed in the subsequent records was enough to make the skin crawl.
From that point on, merchants began disappearing in the area surrounding Caedia. It happened multiple times: solitary traveling merchants vanishing without a trace, or entire wagons gone as though they had never existed.
Taken alongside the strange recent ordeal of the Shield of the Peaks party, a deeply unsettling picture began to take shape in Orum's mind.
"What's your read on it, Orum?" Felix's question cut through his thoughts.
Orum raised his head and spoke slowly. "My assessment is that Anna, the cleric from Shield of the Peaks, was forcibly abducted and sold by humans. This was not the work of any monster."
"Only humans could do that to another human."
His voice dropped to something low and cold. "Given the history of Caedia, it's reasonable to conclude that the disappearances of those merchants were the work of the local villagers themselves."
The campfire whipped violently in a gust of mountain wind, its orange light flaring and dying across Orum's face.
He spoke each word with quiet, deliberate weight. "Caedia, at its core, is nothing but a village of bandits."