[Town Quest: Road Repair

Quest Details: The main road outside town was recently heavily damaged by a landslide. A mage is needed to assist with clearing rubble and reinforcing the roadbed. Estimated duration: three days. Wandering monsters may attack during this period; applicants must possess basic self-defense capability.

Reward: One gold coin.]

...

[Village Quest: Monster Extermination

Quest Details: Milky Aroma Village has recently been troubled by an unknown monster. Nocturnal in habit, it targets dairy cows during lactation, and several cows have already dried up from the stress.

Reward: One gold coin.]

"Rewards are about the same." Banxia scanned the Iron-rank quest board and tapped one of the notices with a finger. "This one, the monster job. What do you think?"

His own adventurer rank at the guild hadn't been updated yet, so for now they were operating under Roxy's credentials.

Not that the young woman herself would claim to be truly Iron-rank. By her own account, her real strength was far beyond that; she'd simply leveled slowly because she hadn't fully adjusted to this new world yet.

Banxia, clutching nothing but a rookie nameplate, was in no position to argue.

"May I ask why?" Roxy looked mildly puzzled.

The road repair quest seemed considerably safer, and the timeline was spelled out clearly.

Banxia glanced at the notice her eyes had drifted to. His expression was undisguised:

"Digging dirt, leveling ground, just thinking about it sounds exhausting. And it'd probably drag on for days."

He pulled his gaze back. "Compared to that, fighting a monster is simple. One shot and it's done."

"..."

Roxy was quiet for a moment.

She had a vague sense that Mr. Banxia's definitions of "difficult" and "simple" were, perhaps, slightly different from those of ordinary people.

Quest selected.

The distance wasn't far. They headed to the town post station and hitched a ride on a carriage going the same way.

Before they left, Banxia swung by the Star Moon Chamber of Commerce to push his clothes pickup back to the following day. Plans change, that was just life, and fortunately the shop didn't charge him a rescheduling fee.

The carriage rolled into Milky Aroma Village as dusk was settling in.

The moment they passed through the village entrance, both of them caught it: a faint, clean smell of fresh milk drifting on the air. Whether that was some kind of magic or simply the nature of the place, neither could say.

They climbed down from the carriage, quest notice in hand, and were about to go find the village chief, the client on record.

"You monster — you actually think you can stay in this village?!"

The word monster snapped Banxia's attention over instantly.

Just as quickly, he lost interest and looked away.

No actual monster. Just a few brats with wooden sticks driving off another kid.

"Are they playing a game?"

Roxy watched with genuine uncertainty. Having been isolated since childhood, she had never quite understood how children dealt with each other.

"Most people would find it hard to call bullying a game. I didn't expect such a unique perspective from you, Miss Roxy."

"...So that is bu — bullying."

It took Roxy a beat to catch up. Then she realized she'd been discussing this far too casually, wiped the detached look off her face, and turned to the young man beside her.

"Mr. Banxia —"

As far as she knew, professional-tier adventurers on assignment stuck strictly to quest-related actions. No detours. Nothing that might complicate teamwork or bleed into the next phase of the job.

Banxia met her halting look. He blinked, caught on a moment later, and waved a hand with a quiet laugh.

"Don't ask me. If you want to stop them, go stop them."

"Understood."

Roxy cleared her throat.

As an adult, she was shorter than the brats with the wooden sticks. That was simply a fact. It wasn't going to intimidate her.

Besides, she was a genuinely skilled mage, even if not a single other person had acknowledged that yet.

"Stop! Stop fighting right now!"

She stepped forward. Not loud, but clear. The brats with the sticks all turned to look.

"Huh? Where'd this kid come from? You from this village? How come we've never seen you?"

"..."

Being mistaken for a child, to her face, by actual children hit the blue-haired young woman harder than she would have liked.

She shook it off, steadied her expression, and pressed on.

"This many people ganging up on one person is nothing to be proud of."

"You don't even know, " The ringleader started to fire back, then caught sight of Banxia's figure. His face went pale.

"An adult, run!"

"Wait, I wasn't done, "

Roxy's aqua-blue eyes went wide as the whole pack scattered in an instant, gone before she could blink.

She'd been ready to give them a proper talking-to.

"All settled?"

Banxia yawned and ambled over behind her, unhurried.

The autumn air was crisp, the dry breeze just heavy enough to drag at his eyelids. The rattling carriage ride had left a lingering fatigue he still hadn't shaken, and he felt like he could drop and sleep right where he stood.

"More or less... I suppose." Roxy glanced at the tall, slouching figure behind her, then thought back to what the brats had said, and let out a quiet sigh.

She turned to the cloth-clad boy still standing in the same spot, unmoved. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. Thank you." The boy calmly wiped the mud from his face, then paused.

"In return, let me take you to the village chief."

"Hm?" Roxy tilted her head.

They hadn't told him why they were here.

The boy saw her confusion. "I have strange dreams sometimes. Everything that happened today, it was almost exactly what I dreamed."

"A prophetic dream?!" The words burst out of Roxy before she could stop them.

In her original world and in this one alike, seeing the future was extraordinarily rare even within magic. An innate prophetic talent was rarer still, the kind of thing she had only ever read about in old texts, never encountered in person.

"Almost exactly," Banxia said, his interest catching. He studied the boy, twelve, maybe thirteen at most. "Which means today deviated from your dream?"

Roxy snapped back to attention and looked at the boy again.

Facing both their gazes now, the boy who had stood perfectly calm while being surrounded and harassed showed a bewildered expression for the first time.

He looked up. Straight at Banxia.

"The biggest anomaly is you, sir."

"Me?" Banxia pointed at himself. "How so?"

"In the scene I dreamed, only the blue-haired lady was supposed to come to this village."

"That's it?" Banxia had braced for something significant. One extra person. His shoulders eased. "No one can say for certain what the future holds."

Roxy quietly let out the breath she'd been holding.

She'd expected some dire revelation. It was just one extra person. The young man had taken the words right out of her thoughts.

However mysterious prophetic magic might be, it couldn't map every thread of the future with perfect accuracy. If someone could truly do that, it would have already surpassed the limits of magic entirely.

The boy shook his head.

"No. In my dream, early tomorrow morning, many people in the village will die." He paused. "Including you, miss."

"...I will die?"

"Killed by monsters coming from the northern forest. Along with the others in the village."

"Monsters?!"

"I'm going to be killed by monsters?!"

...

➤ Next: Roxy Understood Everything

Chapter 22 - Roxy Understood Everything

"Honored adventurers, you're finally here."

The village was small to begin with, so news of outsiders arriving had spread to every corner before long.

The village chief, past fifty, leaned on a wooden walking stick and hurried forward to meet the three of them.

"Lord Chief," the boy called out softly, head down, then quickly ran off.

"I've told you — at times like this, you're supposed to call me Father..." The old village chief watched the small figure disappear and sighed, then turned back to the two of them with an apologetic smile.

"If that little rascal said anything strange, please don't take it to heart, honored adventurers. He lost his father at a young age..."

"Wait — he lost his father at a young age?" Roxy caught the contradiction.

"Ah, the one I mean is his biological father. Not me."

The village chief waved both hands quickly, a flustered urgency in the voice.

"His father and I were like brothers. Sadly, he passed away in an accident long ago, and the boy's temperament grew a bit odd after that..."

Just those few words, and both Roxy and Banxia could already tell the relationships behind this were bound to be tangled.

Neither of them had any interest in prying into the gossip right now, though.

The boy's horrifying words still weighed heavily on Roxy's mind. As a mage, she understood the rarity and uncertainty of prophetic dreams better than most, but the boy's eyes hadn't looked like those of a liar.

She couldn't help worrying about the future he'd seen.

Banxia, meanwhile, was worrying about something else entirely: what if, because of his arrival, the monster that was supposed to appear simply didn't show up?

...

"My name is Giendy. I'm the chief of this village."

Introducing himself as they walked, the old village chief led the two adventurers deeper into the village. The place was small, and after only a few steps they came to a stop in front of its only tavern.

The door stood half-open, and the smell of boiled vegetables and baked wheatcakes drifted from inside.

Giendy rested a hand against the doorframe and rubbed both hands together in slight embarrassment.

"I want to resolve this matter quickly as much as anyone, but it's nearly dinnertime, and you've traveled all the way from the city. You honored adventurers must be hungry."

"..."

Roxy shifted her gaze to the side.

The scenery along the walk had hardly changed at all. Aside from the tavern, which at least looked somewhat decent, every other building followed the same layout, cowshed on the ground floor, living quarters above, with each household raising one or two piebald dairy cows. As they'd passed by, several villagers were squatting under cows' bellies, milking them. A completely serene pastoral scene. She couldn't spot a single trace of monster activity anywhere.

And as the client, the village chief was simply too warm and hospitable.

Roxy had taken similar village commissions before. Every employer she'd encountered wanted the monster gone immediately, so they could get back to earning a living as fast as possible. She had never seen, never even heard of, an employer who turned around and showed consideration for an adventurer's travel fatigue.

Strictly from the perspective of an employer, this old village chief's conscience was so remarkably clean it made her vaguely uneasy.

If even she felt this way, Banxia had certainly taken note of everything long ago without showing it.

Just as she thought. Upon hearing the village chief's pleasantries, the young man's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.

He lifted his gaze and cut straight past the small talk.

"That's all trivial. Tell me the intel on the monster. If you know its exact location, even better."

As expected of Mr. Banxia, Roxy nodded inwardly. After all, they'd taken a commission to deal with a monster, this went straight to the most crucial point. How much useful information the other party could actually provide would be clear the moment he answered.

"Regarding the monster, it's a long story... it goes all the way back to my grandfather's generation —"

"Then make it short." Banxia cut him off. "If possible, I'll take care of it tonight."

The village chief clearly didn't understand why this young man was even more impatient than the employer himself, but after a brief hesitation, brought out the prepared account:

"According to what was passed down from my grandfather's time, there once was a monster in the northern forest that specifically sucked cow milk. It would sneak into the village at night to cause trouble.

Later, some unnamed adventurer happened to be passing through and drove it off.

Judging by the situation now, I'm afraid that same monster has come back."

The two adventurers quietly exchanged a glance.

A story so vague it couldn't fool a three-year-old, even Roxy was frowning. A monster that specifically sucked cow milk. An unnamed adventurer casually driving it off while passing through. This was obviously a bedtime story warped just enough to pass as an explanation.

If even she could see through it on the spot, then the experienced vanguard standing beside her surely...

"All right. I'll head over to the northern forest later and take a look."

"Huh?" Roxy looked up in surprise, blue eyes turning toward the tall young man. "Isn't that too dangerous?"

This was the southern part of the continent, where monsters were far less fearsome than in the north, but an unknown forest at night was never something to take lightly. Mutated beasts, creatures carrying monster blood, genuine monsters, all of them could emerge under the cover of darkness.

And then there were the boy's words, still pressing down on her. If his prophetic dream was real, then whatever lurked in that northern forest was something capable of killing even a full-fledged mage like her.

"It's fine. Just going to scout the situation." Banxia waved a hand, tone casual.

Roxy blinked back to the present. "Are you planning to go alone?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Banxia gave her a puzzled look.

"...No, it's nothing." Roxy suddenly remembered the last time, the young man carrying her through the ruins while they chased goblin guards.

Right. Compared to bringing her along, Banxia moving alone in the wilderness was far less likely to give away his position.

She stole a quick glance at the village chief standing nearby, who was clearly hiding something. There was definitely something off about this commission, and when she put it together with the boy's prophetic dream,

The pieces suddenly connected.

Was Mr. Banxia deliberately leaving her in the village? Only holding back from saying so openly because the village chief was present?

Did he think the village chief was the one responsible for tomorrow's tragedy, and so he was leaving her here to investigate?

"...I understand, Mr. Banxia."

"Hm? Oh, good."

...

Dinner was simple, boiled vegetables with bread and locally raised beef.

For Roxy, who had grown up poor and always watched her spending, it was already a perfectly fine meal. Banxia was quite satisfied too. The beef tasted even better than what he'd had in the city, carrying a faint milky richness to it.

Seeing the two adventurers eat their fill, the village chief stepped forward. "We don't have an inn here, but there's a vacant house not far from the village. You're welcome to use it tonight."

"Thank you," Roxy replied politely.

The tavern door swung open and a figure walked out.

"You little rascal! Where did you disappear to just now?"

The village chief's scolding made the boy flinch.

"Old man, I know you're worried, but you can't talk to him like that." The tavern's plump proprietress came over carrying a plate of still-steaming food and set it in front of the little boy.

"Nosy." The village chief's tone softened noticeably.

Watching the two of them bicker with that unmistakable familiarity, Banxia and Roxy only then realized, the tavern proprietress and the village chief were husband and wife.

And the little boy was clearly the same child from this afternoon. The one with prophetic dreams who still got bullied.

"..."

➤ Next: Monster Intel — Face to Face