The Hero Searches Everywhere For The Companion He Expelled (5)

Meanwhile, the Hero’s party—

“Heyyyyyyy! It’s freezinggggggg!!”

Irina hugged herself and cried out in a trembling voice.

The weather in Ice Heatland changed easily. The sky had been clear until moments ago, but within less than an hour it had clouded over again and snow had begun to fall. Strong winds then started raging, turning it into a blizzard.

Ice Heatland was so bitterly cold that flying creatures could not fly there. They were resistant to heat, so they could fly during the daytime, but now that it was night, they could not.

And so, the Hero’s party had been trudging endlessly across the snowy plains.

“Is Yuri really here!?”

Even the usually composed Camula asked in a shrill, hysterical voice.

Unable to take any more, the Hero, Vanrost Rain, shouted at them.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!! You two begged me for those expensive fur coats, so don’t start complaining that you’re cold now!!”

“But cold is cold!”

“Exactly! No matter what you wear, a place like this is still freezing!!”

The coats Irina and Camula wore were top-quality garments made from silver fur.

Rosa wore her own leopard-patterned coat.

Vanrost bit his lip.

It wasn’t as though he had come to this freezing wasteland because he wanted to.

He had only bothered coming because he had been told that useless deadweight was here.

The moment he found Yuri, he would grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him back with him.

(Once I bring him back, I’ll have him cook for us right away, prepare our beds, and polish our equipment. There’s a mountain of work for him to do. He gets to work for the Hero himself. I’m sure even he’ll consider it an honor. Still, where the hell is he?)

He had never expected to find him immediately in such a vast snowfield.

However, caves were scattered here and there, and adventurers visiting Ice Heatland used them as resting places.

There was a good chance Yuri and his companion were inside one of those caves.

The locations of the caves were marked on the map as well, so Vanrost had decided to head for the nearest one first.

Rosa alone remained energetic as she strode briskly onward.

Then she stopped, raised a gauntleted hand over her eyes, and surveyed the surroundings.

That was when her eyes suddenly gleamed.

“Ah, I found an Ice Arangora. Catching that thing would make us a fortune!!”

After spotting a gigantic pure-white rabbit bounding heavily through the snow, Rosa broke away from the formation and started chasing it.

Hearing that, Irina ran after Rosa as well.

“Rosa, is that true?”

“It sure is. Just its fur and horn would fetch enough money for us to live it up for quite a while. Its meat sells for a fortune at high-end restaurants too!!”

“Eee! I’ll help!!”

“All right, let’s flank it.”

Van shouted furiously at Rosa and Irina as they chased the gigantic rabbit monster away from him.

“Heeeey!! Don’t just run off and do whatever you want!!”

But the roar of the gale swallowed his shout without a trace.

Camula, who had been behind him, let out a deep sigh.

“For now, let’s shelter from the blizzard in one of the resting caves. Yuri and their companion might be there as well. Irina and Rosa know where the caves are from the map, so I’m sure they’ll come once they finish hunting.”

“……”

In the direction Camula pointed, there was indeed a cave in the rocky mountain exactly where the map indicated.

For a moment, Vanrost had hoped Yuri might be there, but no one was inside.

There were, however, traces of a campfire.

And they were very recent.

Had Yuri and his companion been here? If so, did that mean they had already moved on to the next place?

He wanted to follow their trail, but his companions still had not returned, and walking through the freezing gale was dangerous. They had no choice but to spend the night here.

The cave was at least better than outside because it sheltered them from the blizzard.

Camula took firewood from her Storage Ball and lit a fire.

The inside of the cave brightened and grew slightly warmer.

Then, just like the day before, she handed him some tasteless dried meat.

The ground was hard, and the cold seeped up through his backside.

(At times like this, he always had cushions ready.)

He missed how comfortable they had been.

But Camula had no such cushions with her.

“Warm Wind.”

He felt a faintly warm breeze.

When Yuri had been with them, they had always been able to remain at a comfortable temperature even inside caves. He had assumed anyone could do something that simple.

With Camula’s magic, however, the cave barely became any warmer.

After a while, Rosa and Irina returned. Judging from their satisfied expressions, they had apparently succeeded in hunting the Ice Arangora.

Upon entering the cave, Rosa spoke with admiration.

“Oh, it’s actually warm in here.”

“Huh? Is it?”

“You’ve got a fire going, and the Warm Wind spell is working too… Thanks, Camula.”

Camula turned her face away with a huff when Rosa thanked her.

Irina, however, let out a dissatisfied whine.

“Ehh? It’s usually way warmer than this.”

“If it’s this warm in a frozen wasteland, you’re not going to die. Seriously, just how luxurious have your journeys been until now?”

“““……”””

At Rosa’s exasperated remark, everyone present fell silent.

The comfortable journeys they had always taken for granted had apparently not been normal at all… Was this situation actually what an ordinary journey was like?

That was ridiculous.

Anyone should have been able to warm up a room, right?

“Warm Wind.”

When Vanrost chanted the spell, scorching wind suddenly began raging through the cave.

Rather than merely becoming warm, the cave turned unbearably hot.

Everyone hurried outside in a panic.

Camula screamed angrily at Vanrost.

“Please don’t use magic you aren’t accustomed to! Warm Wind requires very precise control of your magical power!”

“Hmm… Does it?”

“Great. That cave is going to be a scorching hell for a while. Shall we go find another one?”

“This is the worst…”

Irina muttered with a pout at Rosa’s suggestion.

And so, Vanrost and the others ended up walking for nearly another hour in search of a new cave.

Camula muttered with a sigh.

“Even if we search the caves, isn’t it impossible to find Yuri and their companion in a snowfield this vast?”

“If they got into a major battle, we could tell from the monsters moving around… I’ve got that little one searching too, but there hasn’t been any response.”

By “that little one,” Rosa meant the hawk circling far overhead. It was a hawk she had trained, and it served as both a messenger and a scout.

“Well, there are plenty of valuable monsters around here, so we can take our time searching while we hunt. Even if we don’t find them, we’ll still make money, so the trip won’t be wasted.”

Rosa the Drifter possessed the toughness and adaptability needed to fit into almost any party.

However, the Hero Vanrost, Irina, and Camula had left almost every miscellaneous task to Yuri, so they were unaccustomed to functioning with even one person missing.

And not one of the three had ever developed the mindset of trying to manage things themselves.

(Damn it!! I’m going to find him. I absolutely will!)

Remembering the face of his shabby-looking childhood friend, Vanrost clenched his teeth against his lip.

Rosa glanced sideways at the Hero’s profile and sighed.

(He chased the kid all the way out here… If he needed that boy so badly, he shouldn’t have thrown him away in the first place.)

From traveling with them, she had learned that they had left virtually everything except fighting to Yuri. And apparently, Yuri’s support had been flawless.

He had made their sleeping arrangements as comfortable as possible, and he was evidently an excellent cook who had always served them warm meals. On top of that, he had most likely supported the Hero and the others in battle with superb support magic.

The way the Hero’s party fought now was clearly different from their reputation.

The Hero was certainly strong, but he was not vastly superior to an SS-rank adventurer, and while both the mage and the priest were unquestionably S-rank, neither seemed particularly exceptional.

Perhaps the Hero’s party had shone so brightly precisely because Yuri Claudevel had been with them.

Why had they ever thought Yuri was useless?

If Rosa had been the Hero, she would have expelled either Irina or Camula instead.

“Waaah!! I want to go home alreadyyyyy!!”

Watching Irina shout alone in the middle of the snowfield, Rosa muttered under her breath.

“…If anything, you’d be the first one I’d get rid of.”

“What?! What do you mean I’d be first!?”

“Nothing.”

Rosa said that and gave a small shrug.

At that moment, Vanrost stopped walking. He could see something resembling a castle in the distance.

“Hey, there’s a castle over there.”

Vanrost said this as he turned toward Irina and the others following behind him.

But the three women merely tilted their heads in puzzlement.

“What castle?”

“All I can see are rocky mountains.”

“Maybe the cold’s gotten to you and you’re seeing things?”

At the three women’s dismissive reactions, Vanrost turned his gaze back toward where he had seen the castle.

There was no castle there.

Vanrost rubbed his eyes. Had the cold made his mind so hazy that he had begun hallucinating?

This was getting seriously dangerous.

They needed to find a cave where they could rest as soon as possible.