Rivira was a run-down little town that could be abandoned at any moment, so even its stalls and storefronts looked shabby, and there was no way anyone could have built proper roads inside it. Rocky alleys tangled together everywhere, and only the blue crystals giving off their faint glow could be called beautiful, lighting up every corner of the place.
The Chienthrope girl, a medium-sized pack slung over her shoulder, was sprinting through these tangled rocky alleys as if she'd fallen into a panic. She kept glancing back over her shoulder, gasping for breath, running forward in a fluster. Anyone with eyes could tell she was running for her life.
Unfortunately, her speed compared to the ones chasing her wasn't fast at all.
Two figures came scything toward her at astonishing speed, running fast enough to stir the air, whipping up the howling wind.
That speed, that force of presence, would make even the most sheltered person understand one thing.
Namely, that these two behind the girl were extremely strong.
At the very least, compared to her, who was only Lv.3, they had to be far stronger.
Thinking that, the girl grew more and more panicked, and gritting her teeth, she darted into a narrow side path, winding into even more convoluted little lanes in an attempt to shake off the ones behind her.
Sadly, no matter how hard she tried, a single Lv.3 like her couldn't shake those two.
At one point a golden figure swept in ahead of her, coming up behind her before suddenly leaping, flipping over her head to land in front of her and block her way.
The girl let out a strange yelp. Like a horse slamming on the brakes, her limbs flailed, and she barely managed to stop her own forward momentum. The moment she turned to flee the other way, she made the grim discovery that it too was already blocked.
"Still planning to run?"
Leo stood there alone with his single sword, blocking the girl's path, watching her. One hand rested on the hilt of the Dragon Fang Sword at his waist, but he didn't draw it. He just stood there and spoke quietly.
"Y-you two...!?"
The girl's face went stiff. She looked at Leo, then at Ais, who was likewise blocking the path behind her, thrown into a total panic.
"...Who are you?" Ais observed her in silence for a while before speaking. "Why did you run?"
The question earned a tearful outburst from the girl.
"Th-then why were you two chasing me?!"
It was a good question, good enough to leave Ais stuck for words.
It was Leo who answered it.
"You were acting so suspicious, of course we'd chase you." Leo said it with a half-smile. "Someone just died in this town, after all. There was a murder. And here you are looking scared out of your wits and skulking around. Anyone would take you for the suspect, right?"
That seemed to set her off.
"You two are the suspects! You're the murderers!"
She went on with her indignant accusations for a bit, then finally noticed that the person blocking her path looked a little familiar.
"No, wait... Aren't you the Sword Princess?"
The girl recognized Ais's identity, her face full of shock.
Ais nodded and stared at her without a word.
Once she'd recognized Ais, the girl immediately recognized Leo too.
"I-I've seen you on the Guild's notice board! You're the Monster Rookie of Loki Familia, the one who Ranked Up three times in two months! Leo Eligos!"
She pointed at Leo, the shock and bewilderment on her face growing even stronger.
"Monster Rookie..."
Leo, for his part, was baffled by the epithet.
It was fitting enough, but why didn't it sound like a compliment?
A rookie was a rookie. Why tack a prefix on it?
Who was a monster, exactly?
Leo grumbled inwardly while keeping his face perfectly calm, and even took a step closer to the girl.
"Now that our identities are out, shouldn't it be time to reveal yours?"
At that, the girl looked at the two people before her, famous across Orario and even the whole lower world, and suddenly calmed down, no longer so panicked.
The change was as if she'd suddenly understood that these two weren't her enemies and wouldn't hurt her.
"I'm Lulune. Lulune Louie."
That was how she introduced herself.
Leo glanced at Ais, who answered with a shake of her head.
The meaning was simple: she was telling Leo she didn't know this person.
"Which Familia are you from?"
Leo already knew who she was, but he asked anyway, feigning ignorance.
Then she gave a Familia name.
"Hermes Familia."
At those words, never mind Leo, Ais had a somewhat subtle reaction.
"Hermes Familia..."
Clearly, Ais knew of this Familia.
Hermes Familia was a somewhat unusual Familia.
To the outside world they claimed to be an exploration-type Familia, one whose main business was delving the Dungeon, and that was how they were registered with the Guild as well. In truth, though, as long as there was profit in it, whether it was commerce, courier work, or intelligence, they'd take it on and get involved. They dabbled in every field and would handle anything, to the point of being a notoriously unscrupulous Familia.
By the Guild's grading, this Familia was only rank F, and even its highest-Level member was only Lv.2. It was a Familia so small it couldn't be smaller, and its Dungeon progress only reached as far as Floor 19. Yet for some reason, this one little Familia held a privilege no other Familia had: the right to come and go freely from Orario. And its patron deity, Hermes, was constantly wandering all over the place, personally working a job delivering goods. Very suspicious, very mysterious.
Compared to Loki Familia with its Familia rank of S, Hermes Familia hardly seemed like much, yet no matter who you asked, the moment their patron deity Hermes came up, they'd put on a hard-to-describe expression.
Loki included.
Ais didn't know the inside story, but Leo, who knew the original work well, understood it perfectly.
Hermes Familia. This Familia was actually not weak.
It was still nowhere near a strongest-in-the-city Familia like Loki Familia, but Hermes Familia's overall strength was enough to rank among the best even across all of Orario.
Because their patron deity Hermes valued keeping a low, ordinary profile and liked to hide his strength, at his request a great many of the adventurers in this Familia had concealed their own strength. In their Guild filings they'd falsely reported the Familia's dozen-odd Lv.3 members and its Lv.4 captain all as Lv.2, and even under-reported their Dungeon progress by more than twenty floors. It was shady beyond belief.
That maker of the Talaria mentioned before, the Perseus who'd acquired the Mystery Development Ability, Asfi Al Andromeda, was the captain of this very Familia. Her own Level had long since reached Lv.4, but to the outside world she claimed to be Lv.2, leading many people who didn't know better to badly misjudge her and the strength of the Hermes Familia she belonged to.
This girl before them, Lulune Louie, had probably lied about her Level to the Guild too, which was why she seemed so unknown.
Knowing none of this, once Ais had confirmed Lulune's identity and background, she spoke again right away.
"Why did you run?"
This question, already asked once, finally earned a different answer this time.
"I-I thought you two were the ones who killed the courier, that you were chasing me to get that piece of goods!"
Lulune's words drew another different reaction from Ais.
"...Goods?"
This time the question earned no reply from Lulune.
Lulune stood there, hesitating, starting to speak and stopping, as if wrestling with whether she should tell the inside story.
Seeing this, Leo just spoke up.
"You mean the person who was killed was actually a courier, that he handed some piece of goods over to you, and then got targeted and killed by someone you don't know. Am I right?"
Faced with Leo's blunt questioning, Lulune fell silent, choosing to say nothing.
Ais understood Leo's meaning too.
Leo's meaning was simple. He was saying someone had set their sights on a certain item, an item that had originally been on the courier who'd been killed, which was why they'd killed him, wanting to seize that item. But the item had already been secretly handed off to someone else, namely the girl in front of them.
Lulune had received the goods, learned before leaving Rivira that the courier had been killed, and immediately guessed that someone had set their sights on the goods, or rather on her.
That was why she'd seemed so hurried and panicked, and the moment she'd noticed she was being followed, she'd immediately started running in a blind panic.
She'd thought Leo and Ais were the ones coming to hunt her down and take the goods, but once she realized the two were famous figures of Loki Familia, she felt there was no way these two could be the killers.
Say what you would, they were core elites of Loki Familia, members of the strongest Familia in the city. They shouldn't be so blatant as to commit something so sordid as murdering a fellow adventurer and dragging their Familia's name through the mud.
So, thinking this, Lulune stopped panicking and regained her composure.
Ais's gaze turned to the medium-sized pack Lulune carried.
That pack the girl had been guarding so tightly the whole time, that had to be what held the goods that had brought this deadly trouble down on her, didn't it?
What was it?
Ais didn't know, and by rights she shouldn't have cared either.
Given her nature, she normally wouldn't be so concerned about something that had nothing to do with her.
But for some reason, looking at that pack, Ais felt an inexplicable irritation, even a wrenching in her chest.
That feeling was almost like it was telling her that whatever was inside absolutely was not something unrelated to her.
And while she stared at Lulune's pack, Leo had already picked the whole thing apart.
"I hear Hermes Familia has dealings across a lot of fields, including a professional service delivering goods, with even the patron deity himself working that trade."
Leo spoke in a calm tone.
"So, can I assume that you, as a member of Hermes Familia, actually took on some request today? That you needed to retrieve a piece of goods from someone here and bring it up to the surface?"
"That person was the courier, and you're the receiver. Maybe the two of you didn't know each other's identities, and you certainly didn't know exactly where the goods came from, but as long as the passphrase matched, you could take the goods off him. After that, all you had to do was bring it up to the surface and hand it to the client."
"But what you didn't expect was that the courier would be killed afterward, and that you'd very likely become the next targeted victim, which is why you were so frantic to get away."
Those words, without a doubt, frightened Lulune.
"Y-you, you you you...!"
She pointed at Leo, stammering so badly she couldn't get a word out.
That reaction alone told anyone that everything Leo had said was correct.
Something that should have been a closely guarded secret had just been guessed at, nearly whole, by this Monster Rookie of Loki Familia.
She'd heard the Braver was a brilliant strategist, a tactician overflowing with schemes. Was this Monster Rookie of Loki Familia the same kind of brains type?
That would be too terrifying, wouldn't it?
Lulune, badly rattled, had no idea that Leo was no brains-type tactician. He'd simply stood on the vantage point of the original work and used his foreknowledge to lay the whole thing bare.
"...That piece of goods, what exactly is it?"
Ais broke her silence, and with suppressed emotion, pressed the question.
"I-I don't know what it is either!" Lulune shook her head, thoroughly aggrieved. "The client told me not to ask any questions, and said I absolutely could not show it to anyone..."
Those words didn't make Ais back off. If anything, they made her fix her stare on Lulune.
That attitude was practically telling the girl outright: hurry up and take it out, stop hiding it.
Lulune was a little reluctant, but considering the thing had already brought deadly trouble down on her, she could only unwillingly set the medium-sized pack holding the goods on the ground and open it.
Then Lulune lifted out the divider panel at the bottom of the pack and took out a bag cinched shut at the mouth.
At that moment, Ais's heartbeat inexplicably began to quicken.
She stared hard at the bag, or rather at the thing inside it, and even her breathing grew ragged without her noticing.
Then her blood began to churn.
Then her head began to spin.
Her instincts were screaming, refusing, even feeling something like nausea, and she was suddenly seized by the urge to throw up.
Don't open it!
The cry rang out from the bottom of Ais's heart, as if she wanted to flee this place, to flee that thing.
Unfortunately, feeling that resistance now was already too late.
Under her gaze and Leo's, Lulune took the item out of the bag.
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