He Had Realized Something.

He passed through the Hero Gate and entered the forest.

And then, all of a sudden, Kikori realized he no longer stopped on the plains, and he looked back.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

Still, there wasn’t much meaning to it.

What mattered more was how they were going to move from here.

“You said this was an investigation… so what do we do?”

“Hmmm…”

Normally, they would have kept going straight ahead.

That was the option with the least chance of going wrong.

But if they did that, there was no point in calling it an investigation.

“For now… yeah. Let’s head forward at random, then try turning left from there?”

“Yeah. If we leave some kind of marker, we won’t have to worry about getting lost.”

“Alright, that’s it.”

With Kikori in front, they started walking, and at a suitable spot he carved a cut into a tree with his knife.

He made it into the shape of an arrow to keep it clear, but… Kikori still tilted his head, wondering if something like this was enough.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s fine. It’s easy to understand.”

“Alright.”

They nodded to each other and went left.

They walked, trampling through the rustling grass… but they didn’t run into a single goblin.

Not even a Horned Rabbit attacked them, either.

“If monsters don’t attack at all, that kills our business…”

“Yeah. What could have happened to make it like this?”

“I looked it up in a book last night, but there aren’t many similar cases.”

“Similar cases… like a monster hazard?”

“Yeah.”

A monster hazard—just as it sounded—was a general term for “monster disasters,” like monsters charging in like a tsunami, or evolving into abnormally powerful forms.

Apparently both had caused massive damage… and just imagining that this might be one of those made his stomach sink.

“It’s been one thing after another that made me think, ‘I’m going to die,’ but if a monster hazard happened…”

“…Wait a second. I just realized something.”

“What? What did you realize?”

Thinking Kuon might have figured out what was really going on from their conversation, Kikori stopped and turned toward him.

Kuon thought fast. The odds were high he would notice something Kikori wouldn’t.

Kikori looked at Kuon with expectation… and Kuon opened his mouth with a serious expression.

“…Kikori. Have you been staying at someone’s house instead of an inn?”

“Huh?”

“An inn lending out books would be impossible. And there’s no way you bought a book and left it in your room. So that means…”

“…Is that important right now?”

“Not at all. But based on Kikori’s behavior pattern since I met you, I figured it’s probably someone from the Adventurers’ Guild.”

That was insanely sharp. What kind of reasoning got him that far?

Kikori reflexively broke into a cold sweat.

“Well, I figured it was Aria-san, with pretty high probability.”

“Let’s go, Kuon.”

“Ah—so I was right? You’re making progress, Kikori.”

Ignoring Kuon’s “Nyahaha” laughter, Kikori kept walking.