Swamp Girl! Chapter 28

Author’s Notes
I didn’t copy and paste the first chapter here…

And so five days went by.

Generally speaking, it was a journey, but I wasn’t walking on my own two feet. Being constantly rocked side-to-side by the carriage was pretty tiresome.

Backtracking through the hilly countryside, our plotted course would take us through Artor to the capital, roughly two weeks’ journey by carriage.
Today, the fifth day, we still had more than half the distance to go.
However, thinking of the marching speed of the Leon Corps — uh, I mean the Elite Guard, they might be able to make it in twelve.
I asked Leon once, and he said it would take thirteen days. Since we weren’t in that much of a hurry, we’ll be stopping for a night in a town near the Artor Ruins Cl.u.s.ter, Brellwandy.

I was familiar with Brellwandy too. After all, it wasn’t that long ago in my pre-female past that I stayed in town for a month in order to take on Artor. Plus, it was conveniently located near the upper junction of the highway running from the capital to Telaberan and Kakraw.a.n.ga. Even before my recent stay, I’d visited the town many times.
We arrived a day later. Bored out of our minds, we were looking forward to it.

I’d be lying if I said nothing happened over the course of the last five days.
Every day, Palmira seriously sparred with Rupert, but I didn’t know much about the results of her work. At the moment, the difference in strength between her and Rupert was too great. It was pretty difficult to judge whether she was strong or weak.
But I did know that she was stronger than I was right now, at least. Enough that even in my original body, I might’ve lost if she caught me off-guard.
Anyway, Palmira gave it her all, and after grumbling on and on about how bored she was, she got to ride Leon’s horse yesterday, much to her delight. Aira and I took advantage of the opportunity to go for a ride too.

What else did we do? Well, not much.
Aira being Aira, she seemed to be feeling a bit impatient, but now that she’d said she would do her best once we arrived, she wasn’t doing anything.
Well, she did say she’d become a maid. There really wasn’t anything for her to do. You could say that it wasn’t time for her to take the stage yet.

Me, I didn’t do anything in particular.
More or less, the one time I borrowed Palmira’s sword and challenged Rupert resulted in an instant KO. Of course, I had zero expectations of beating him even in my original body, but look, this body didn’t move right.
I didn’t have the strength. My speed wasn’t up to snuff either. Even with Palmira’s small, light sword, my body just ended up flopping about.
Leveraging the recoil to move, Palmira’s style of movement had that covered, but for someone who used to use a sword, my experience conversely got in my way, and I couldn’t swing a sword normally. Too much of my style relied on brute strength.
Then, how about studying a new style of combat? I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be an uphill battle. Frankly, the image of becoming strong and holding a sword didn’t do anything for me now.

Then, what about magic?
Given my current state, it would be the most pragmatic choice. But I couldn’t meet up with my go-to, Irene.
My gut told me that I needed to learn how to use magic to prepare for the inevitable future. But before I got to that, I wanted to ask more about magic itself. I thought it would shed some light on the mystery of this body, too.
Although I’d heard Irene talk about magic before, I realized that it was nowhere near enough in practical terms. Irene might have believed that she taught us, but she didn’t touch on the key points at all.
So I’d been searching for her for these past few days, but she was nowehere to be found. Throwing up my hands and asking Leon would probably drag me into another negotiation1, so I asked Sieg instead.

“Now that you mention it, she isn’t here. She might have gone ahead with the First Platoon.”

Hey, Sieg, I would’ve appreciated a heads-up when you heard about it earlier.
Or rather, the First Platoon wasn’t around either? I didn’t notice at all. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Vyde around at all.

And that was why I didn’t do anything either. If I had to come up with an excuse, I’d say that Aira couldn’t do anything even though she wanted to, and I was just keeping her company out of worry. I’d be lying, though.

Shaken back and forth by the carriage, I spent every day staring out at the unchanging landscape in a sort of stupor. The scenery in the hills was surprisingly nice, but after seeing it every day without end, it began to grate on me.
Even a change in the weather would break the monotony, but unfortunately, every day was accompanied by clear autumn skies.

If anything was different, I guess it would be when we pa.s.sed by the site of the goblin attack?
The carriage attacked by the goblins should’ve been there on the highway, but thanks to the Elite Guard, perhaps, the wreckage had been piled up by the side of the road. Broken apart and burned to a cinder, it was no longer clear it was once a carriage. It was because I spotted fragments of what seemed to be carriage wheels littered here and there that I just barely made the connection.
At that time, we didn’t take a short rest or a long one, so we pa.s.sed by as if nothing had really happened. Even the three of us did no more than stare at it through the carriage window. Without a word, we watched until the wreckage disappeared from sight.

However, near the destroyed carriage, I saw two stones planted in two dirt mounds. They were probably graves. And judging from the number, I guessed that they were for the two people I failed to save.
Silently, I apologized to them in my heart. Then, I briefly prayed for them.
It was definitely the Elite Guard who did this. I wanted to say thanks.
But when dinner came around, I didn’t ask Leon about it. I didn’t have the words.

Three days later, we arrived in Brellwandy. It was afternoon on the sixth day since our departure from Telaberan.

–

–

The city of Brellwandy was pretty small compared to Telaberan.
However, it was still a mid-size city, and although low, there were walls along its outer perimeter.
By this point, we’d gone from hill country to a low mountain plain. After crossing two more mountains, we’d reach the capital.
Like I said before, the city was very conveniently located at the highway crossroads, so its prosperity primarily relied on its role as stopover.
Because its location also made it a convenient tradepost, it attracted a certain amount of trade as well. What’s more, thanks to its location at the highway crossroads, it was fairly important in terms of strategic value, and part of the imperial army was always stationed there.
On the other hand, there was a good reason it never expanded beyond a mid-size city despite such qualities.

That reason? Every city leading from this one was too big.
To the north, the port city of Telaberan. To the east, the fortress city of Kakraw.a.n.ga. And to the south, the greatest city in the empire: the imperial capital, Granadas. In terms of location and role, they did everything Brellwandy did, but way better. That was why Brellwandy ended up kinda half-a.s.sed as a military and trade post.
Still, historically, it thrived as a city thanks to the Artor Ruins Cl.u.s.ter. But as the ruins were scoured clean, it gradually shrank until it settled at its current size.

However, because of that connection, the Adventurers’ Guild in this city was long-established — and huge. The capital’s was considered the largest, but while this city had a history of decline, it was the nature of the Adventurers’ Guild to stand outside national authority. In a mid-size city, there were less likely to be conflicts over governance.

Even so, for the time being, we were tangled up with the army. Not to mention, the Adventurers’ Guild had very little to do with the part of town that catered to travelers.
We didn’t enter the city just like that. Instead, we circled around to the north and from there, headed straight into the imperial army garrison. I could only find nostalgia in the outside of the city. We wouldn’t even go into town.

“We will stay here for today. There’s still a stretch before us, but for now, this is enough.”

Leon took us to one of the rooms in a relatively nice building on the garrison grounds. Of course, we wouldn’t be getting individual rooms, but aside from that, it was nicer than I expected.

“Oh, wow, thank you so much.”

Maybe after having to stay overnight in the carriage all the time, Aira seemed to be genuinely in high spirits.
On the other hand, I had other matters on my mind.
It wasn’t a single, so Leon wasn’t going to show up in the morning as he usually did, right?
To tell the truth, I had a lot to ask him. After all, I hadn’t heard anything about [Chris] since then.

I wanted to keep that conversation just between the two of us, if I could.
But for all that, that night by the riverbank made me hesitate. When I recalled how strange the mood had been — to be honest, I was pretty nervous about what might happen to me. So ultimately, I’d dragged things out this far without being able to ask.
Well, still, that’s alright…?
I’d leave it at that for now. Personally, I was in considerable violation of my motto — [People who don’t do it today, won’t do it tomorrow] — but actually, there was still quite a distance to go before the capital, and I’d be free during that time anyway, so I was sure I’d find a chance somewhere. Yep, sounds good to me.

“I’ll come again to call you for dinner, but I ask that you refrain from going into town.”

Why?
Before I could ask, Leon was gone. Even if it would be until dinner, there was still quite a lot of time left over, in my opinion.
I crossed the room to open the window.
As it had been at the estate, the room was on the third story of the barracks. From there, I could take in the entire city at a glance.

“Wow, what a lovely view.”

Following after me, Aira’s voice full of wonder. From the side, Palmira poked her face out too, with a similar expression.

In the unbroken panorama of the city, even though the sunset pretty far along by now, there were still quite a number of carriages coming and going. As you might expect of the highway junction, the streets running through the city were quite broad. Even carriages moving away from us were clearly visible. The people walking down there, too.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Brellwandy a lively city. While it was on the small side, plenty of merchant caravans stopped by on their way to — or possibly from — the imperial capital in the south.
My eyes shifted to the heart of the city, falling on a relatively large building around three stories tall. Its outer appearance plain and old, it was the local Adventurers’ Guild. If I could, I wanted to drop by while I was in town. Then I’d deal with Leon.

“What’s that?”

When I looked in the direction Palmira was pointing, I saw the sprawling ocher-stained stone maze outside the city. It was hard to see from here, but even though I said ‘maze’, it was one in appearance only. In truth, it was a half-destroyed city.

So the part aboveground wasn’t actually all that important.
For adventurers, it was the extensive underground labyrinths that made it famous. No one has a clue what it was built for, but the number of labyrinths had been verified. There were twelve, one of them being the maze I discovered. That should probably be all of them.

“That’s the Artor Ruins Cl.u.s.ter.”

Even I could tell my expression was complicated.

“Big Sister, that’s where you…”

“That’s right.”

Nicely remembered, Aira. But I had no good memories of the place, so I promptly confirmed it and nipped that conversation in the bud.
The twelfth labyrinth of the ruins cl.u.s.ter. I didn’t even know its name.
Inside it, I became a woman and was captured by slavers immediately upon leaving. I didn’t remember much about the time I was captured, so I couldn’t say for sure where it was.
However, what concerned me was its current status.

Maybe my original body was there even now.

To be honest, I’d been trying not to think about it, but I imagined that it was highly likely.
Then, if it hadn’t been specially preserved, it would definitely be decaying already… In that case, I’d never be able to go back to how I used to be.
But there was also the chance that that wasn’t the case. It was possible that something was preserving my body. What that ‘something’ might be, I couldn’t even begin to imagine. But possession was also pretty outlandish to begin with, so I couldn’t say for sure that preservation was impossible.
Then right now, all I could do is pin my hopes on that possibility.
That was the very reason I wanted to get information from the Adventurers’ Guild.

There were two things I wanted to confirm there.
First, whether they knew of the twelfth labyrinth’s existence.
Second, a.s.suming they did know, whether my body had been found there.
The twelfth labyrinth was my discovery, so I went in alone without a word to anyone else. So maybe the guild’s current tally was eleven mazes. If so, end of story.
But if they did know, I knew for a fact that the guild would have already issued a request for adventurers to search it.
Depending on the timing, that day might already be past.
At least, you could make a trip through the maze on foot, so the reinvestigation didn’t seem like it’d take that much time. Then maybe, if it were there, they should have discovered a single corpse unnaturally draped in treasure.
If they hadn’t found it yet, I still had a chance to return…

On the other hand, there was a much simpler way.
I could go to the twelfth labyrinth and verify it personally.

Yeah, if I could, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.
But that would be impossible in my current state. It was alright to rely on Leo, but somehow, I had the sneaking suspicion that the truth had been obscured.
Because Leon was still hiding something from me. Definitely.

Once my thoughts reached that point, I itched to do something.
Although I did say I had time to deal with Leon later, if the trip was thirteen days long, simple calculation told me that we’d be setting out tomorrow. In short, today was my only chance.

“Aira, Palmira.”

My eyes studying the guild from the window, I called out to the two of them.

“…Won’t you go into town with me?”

And without waiting for their reply, I made my proposal.

Author’s Notes
I thought it’d be alright to gradually write out the map.

Footnotes
1. Chris says “Asking Leon would be that“, which is kinda vague. I ended up a.s.suming that “that” meant the riverbank scene, since that was the last time Chris asked for any substantive information. ↵