Dinner ended. The village chief stayed behind at the tavern to help the landlady clear the tables and dishes, and sent the young boy to lead the two of them to an empty house on the village outskirts for the night.

Dusk had already crept up from the foot of the mountain. A few scattered oil lamps flickered to life across the village.

"Big brother, you must be a really powerful warrior, right?" The boy was walking ahead when he suddenly turned to ask.

He looked at the young man's sturdy frame, envy plain on his face.

"I suppose so."

"So cool! This is the first time I've ever seen a living warrior in real life."

"Living?" That word made Roxy tense up slightly. Understandable, given that just this afternoon the boy had told her she'd be dead by tomorrow.

"Because in my dreams," the boy said, kicking a pebble off the path, "lots of warriors go to fight the monster in the northern forest, and they all die there."

"Huh?" Roxy stopped walking. "Didn't the village chief say some unknown adventurer drove it off easily back then?"

"Oh, that." The boy didn't look back. "That was a lie the village chief made up. So unconvincing even little kids laughed at it. I honestly didn't think anyone would fall for it."

"...I certainly didn't believe it either." Roxy drew herself up, doing her best to look dignified.

Adorable as the flustered blue-haired girl looked, what Banxia actually cared about was: the monster was fake?

"Tell us everything you know."

"Where to start... Hmm. Right..." The boy paused. "Big brother, do you know of a mage called Raphael?"

Banxia glanced at Roxy. "Famous?"

"I've only heard the name." Roxy said quietly. "One of the few Gold-rank adventurers out of Alterna, and well-known among ordinary people. Apparently Raphael improved quite a few everyday spells."

"I see." Banxia nodded and turned his gaze back to the boy, a silent signal to keep going.

"Raphael came to our village a few months ago. Improved some folk spells, one of which made dairy cows produce more milk."

"That's genuinely impressive." Roxy's tone carried undisguised admiration.

A Gold-rank mage who could casually refine everyday magic like that. She found herself wondering whether she'd ever be able to do the same.

"It really is." Banxia nodded too.

He had lived with the consequences of that spell firsthand, actually. He'd spent a while puzzling over why milk in the city had suddenly gotten so cheap, and now he had his answer. Come to think of it, the tavern keeper had mentioned something about it in passing once, though they'd never gotten into the details of which village.

Still — what did any of this have to do with a monster commission?

"Isn't that a good thing?" Roxy asked, puzzled.

"At first it was. Production went up, the shipments to the city got bigger every day. But before long the village chief realized there was too much milk. Fresh milk suddenly became worthless, yet the shipping and preservation fees owed to the merchants hadn't dropped at all..."

"So they invented a monster as an excuse, to make people in the city think production had returned to what it used to be?" Something clicked for Roxy.

"Yeah, everyone in the village thought it up together." The boy kicked another pebble away, a trace of helplessness in the gesture. "A dumb plan like that can't hold together for long."

"That's true." Roxy said softly.

Even if she and Banxia were sent away none the wiser, the moment another adventurer took the commission, the truth would come out. A dam built from lies only holds until the water finds a crack.

"And besides, tomorrow morning the village will be gone. The thing coming out of the northern forest isn't something we can fight."

"Hold on." Roxy hesitated. "Didn't you say the monster was a story the villagers made up?"

"I'm not talking about that 'monster.'" The boy shook his head. "I'm talking about the one that actually walks out of the northern forest. That thing will kill everyone. I've dreamed the same scene over and over, and each time it gets clearer."

"Then why haven't you told the village chief? Why not have everyone leave first?"

"I told them many times. I tried everything. But they all think I'm crazy. It's exactly like in my dreams: no matter how much I shout, no matter how hard I try to stop them, they won't listen. The future can't be changed."

"..."

Roxy opened her mouth and found nothing to say.

Could the future really not be changed? Would she die tomorrow morning, just like in his dream?

Something stirred in those aqua-blue eyes of hers, a flicker of doubt that even she hadn't noticed.

Right then, the young man beside her said, completely out of nowhere:

"A monster that strong must have a pretty long lifespan, right?"

"?"

The heavy atmosphere went strange.

The boy didn't seem to find anything odd about the question. He thought it over seriously before answering. "In my dreams I heard the lord knights say it was spotted in this area decades ago, so it's probably been alive a long time."

"Then there's no problem!" Banxia nodded, and the look on his face was far more serious than anything he'd shown while listening to the village chief's story.

"How could there possibly be no problem?!" Roxy finally couldn't hold it in.

She had no idea how the two of them had ended up connecting those topics. She turned and fixed the boy with a stare. "In your dream, did they actually deal with the monster in the end?"

"Yeah, they did. I heard that after the guild master of the Adventurers Guild recovered from injuries, the master led several parties to subjugate it together and wiped it out completely."

"It took the guild master personally leading multiple parties just to put it down?!" The color drained from Roxy's face beneath the brim of her hat.

"..."

...

The old house hadn't been touched in ages. Dust lay thick over everything, and the air smelled of dry, aged wood.

If Banxia had been here alone, just cleaning the place would have taken forever.

Fortunately, he had a mage with him. Roxy raised one hand and cast a few everyday spells. The dust obediently clumped together and drifted out the window; even the cobwebs in the corners vanished without a trace.

Watching her work stirred something in Banxia. He really was too short on time. A few more days and he'd have those handy little spells down himself, sooner or later.

He sat for a moment longer, then stood and spoke to the blue-haired girl who had just settled herself beside a pile of straw.

"I'm heading out."

Going out in the dead of night wasn't for a stroll. He was going to find the monster that walked out of the boy's dreams.

"I'm coming with you!"

"Hey, come on..."

"We're a party, aren't we?" Roxy tilted her head up, blue eyes steady beneath the brim of her hat, not an ounce of give in her expression.

Maybe the shock from earlier had helped her sort something out.

Banxia was quiet for a few seconds. Then he gave in.

"Then we agree on this first. You don't make a move. Whatever we see out there, you leave it all to me."

"...Mr. Banxia." The girl's voice softened slightly, as if she were confirming something. "Could it be that you're worried about me?"

Banxia had already crossed to the doorway. Only his silhouette remained, framed against the dark.

"...A bit, yes."

"..."

➤ Next: Monster Under the Moonlight

Chapter 24 - Monster Under the Moonlight

The night was too bright. Moonlight coated the entire forest in a thin silver haze, and the sky was cloudless — tomorrow would probably be a fine day.

Right now, though, the two members of the adventurer party had been wandering the woods for a long time.

"Mr. Banxia, are we... maybe... lost right now...?" The blue-haired girl lifted a hand and pushed up the brim of her hat, revealing a face already worn with fatigue.

The full moon overhead was bright and close tonight, so close that the dark patches on its surface were faintly visible. Yet they had walked north the entire way without so much as a nocturnal beast crossing their path, let alone a monster.

"Don't doubt your own judgment." The young man stopped and turned back to flash her a smile.

"..."

Roxy said nothing. She just stared at him in pure despair.

A warrior and a mage could technically satisfy the bare minimum combat requirements of an adventurer party. But combat was clearly not the whole of adventuring, only one part of it.

"It would be nice to have a skilled ranger or rogue." Banxia let out a sigh, then shifted his gaze to the blue-haired girl, who was sighing just as heavily.

"Miss Roxy, you're a mage, aren't you? Can't you fly up and scout the way...?"

"Mr. Banxia." Roxy drew a slow breath and cut him off with the most deliberate tone she had used all day. "I need to correct a strange misconception. Magic is not omnipotent — at least not in my case."

She paused, then added:

"And I have never heard of any mage who could fly. The only ones who fly are high-ranking demons."

These demons were not the same kind she was familiar with. The definition in this world differed from the one in the world Roxy had originally come from. Back there, some possibility of communication between demons and humans still existed. Here, it was completely out of the question, demons and humans were mortal enemies. Eating humans was pure instinct for them; even if they spoke the same language, it was only to hunt more effectively.

"...Is that right? Mages really are pretty useless."

"Um, I heard all of that."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Ha... haha... I'm so sorry the mage in our party is so weak..." Roxy crouched down hugging her staff, the tip of her hat drooping limply, looking so dejected she seemed ready to draw circles in the dirt with it.

"Looks like I'll have to handle it myself." Banxia rolled out his joints. He had not wanted to make this much of a scene.

But there was no other option. He would have to use the warrior's unique technique of leaving the ground entirely, get up high, and figure out exactly how far off course they had wandered. He had already tried climbing the tallest tree nearby to look out. The canopy was too dense for even wind to pass through, and the trees were all roughly the same height. Even from the top, his field of view had been nearly useless.

He bent his knees, on the verge of jumping, and then a violent wave of pressure hit them from the distance.

The gust arrived without any warning, carrying fine sand and shredded leaves, slamming into both of them head-on.

"The wind?!" Roxy clapped a hand onto her hat before it could be ripped away, squinting hard, her braids yanked arrow-straight by the gale.

Banxia killed his jump and raised an arm to shield his face. Small pebbles crackled and ricocheted off his fingers.

A few seconds later, a heavy thud slammed down somewhere close.

The moment that figure landed, the wind cut off completely. The canopy that had been roaring and thrashing went dead quiet. The entire forest seemed to hold its breath.

"..."

Roxy lowered the hand from her hat. She was just about to exhale.

The young man's hand had already locked firmly around her wrist.

"Mr. Banxia—?!"

She never finished the sentence. He scooped her onto his hip with one arm and moved, and the tree shadows on both sides blurred into streaks behind them.

Only when they stopped did Roxy understand why he had grabbed her and run without once looking back.

She turned to look.

A massive creature, crimson from head to tail, crouched in the clearing where they had just been standing. It had the body of a lizard, but a pair of membranous wings not yet fully spread bulged from its back, and its amber slit-pupils gleamed in the moonlight like two cold lanterns.

...A dragon?

The thought surfaced, and Roxy's calves went weak without her permission.

Whether in her original world or this one, dragons were not something ordinary people could face. They were natural disasters. They were legend. They were synonymous with something that even Platinum-rank adventurers might not walk away from.

No wonder, in the young boy's prophetic dream, even the guildmaster, a Platinum-rank adventurer, had needed a host of seasoned adventurers alongside him just to bring one down.

If this was a demonic dragon, then everything made sense. She did not yet know the specific breed, but its species and sheer size announced exactly what kind of existence it was.

"This big lizard looks like it's been around a while." The young man set the blue-haired girl down, his eyes burning as he stared at the monster.

"Eh?"

Even after everything they had been through together, those abrupt, inexplicable words still caught her off guard. Strangely, some of the fear loosened.

"Mr. Banxia... that's a dragon, not a big lizard..."

"Doesn't matter. Monsters are all the same as long as they can be killed."

"..."

It made absolutely no sense. And yet, coming from his mouth, those words somehow pulled Roxy's calm back from whatever edge it had fallen off.

That was when she noticed something else wrong. The crimson dragon had not lunged. It was just staring, those massive vertical pupils contracting and expanding in the moonlight, watching them.

She almost thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. Was that dragon actually... wary of them?

Had the roles of hunter and hunted somehow flipped?

"I'll leave the support to you." Banxia kept his eyes on the dragon. Even for him, there was no hiding it, encountering a monster this size for the first time made him tense. Not long ago, he had still been working out how to handle goblins. A few days later, he was standing in front of a demonic dragon.

"Understood. I'll give it everything." Roxy tightened her grip on her staff.

Whatever the reason the monster had not attacked yet, there was only ever one option between humans and monsters in this world. Running into something at this level was simply bad luck. But if they died here, they would at least make sure it remembered their names.

Her mind was made up. The trembling in her calves, little by little, stilled.

The monster was holding back. Toying with them, probably, a cat watching a pair of mice.

"Here I go!"

"..."

The words had barely left his mouth. Roxy had no time to respond. A terrifying crater burst open right where he had been standing.

The dark figure was already gone.

Then a heavy, concussive boom shook the night sky.

Not a roar. A cry of pain.

"GRAAAGH!"

Roxy's head snapped up. The young man in black had come down squarely on top of the dragon's massive skull. The force drove the dragon's head violently downward, and the sheer unreasonable weight of the impact drove its lower body into the dirt.

The demonic dragon let out a low growl of shock and fury, thrashing its neck, trying to fling the tiny figure off its head.

➤ Next: You Truly Bring Me Joy, Red Mirror Dragon