WOSE Chapter 18

Kalix and familiar knights occupied a couple of wide tables.

He must have rested well too—his hair and face were fresh and clean.

"I was wondering if I should go wake you, but you came at the right time. Hungry?"

Kalix pulled out the chair beside him. His attitude had always been friendly, but feeling it was especially so today wasn't just her imagination.

Iyu sat in the empty seat with Tamia, satisfied with her achievement.

Only after sitting did Iyu notice about half the party was missing.

"Where are the others?"

"The coachmen already finished eating and are wandering around looking for carriages, and the Holy Knight Commander is still..."

Surely he wasn't still praying at the temple. If so, his faith was tiringly intense.

Come to think of it, she'd been appalled watching him take prayer time even during brief rest periods in that barren desert.

Too characteristic for celestials—the other celestial priests had been exhausted to near death.

Iyu silently offered condolences to the priests who couldn't escape the temple.

'Well, enough worrying about others. Let me fill my own stomach first.'

The moment she made that decision, a server approached as if waiting.

"Ready to order?"

A female server with milk chocolate skin and coarsely braided ash-gray hair asked in a cheerful voice, radiating health.

"Could I see a menu?"

"Of course!"

The menu the server handed over was a very thin stone slate with menu items written in white powder like chalk. Erased marks remained here and there, suggesting they modified the menu regularly.

Iyu slowly read the distinctive handwriting.

Reading her hesitation, the server kindly added an explanation.

"Today's recommended menu is lamb stew and dark beer! My personal recommendation is sautéed flat mushrooms, by the way!"

Iyu looked strangely at the woman whose smile creased deep wrinkles at the corners of her mouth.

Even in service work, this was the first dwarf besides Darun who showed only goodwill to them as outsiders without any wariness.

"You're very kind. Your name is...?"

"Belgia."

Iyu casually passed the menu to Tamia and spoke to Belgia.

"Belgia doesn't seem uncomfortable with outsiders. Most people seemed a bit uneasy today."

"That's... partly because of 'that incident,' but most dwarves don't have many chances to meet outsiders."

"Do you meet outsiders often?"

"Working here gives me more opportunities than others, but it's still rare. Actually, Smidrhame rarely gets outside guests except humans coming to trade. Even when guests do come, half are Kelgrida's guests, so Darun usually handles them."

'That's why his attitude was so flexible.'

While she was lost in thought, Belgia fiddled unnecessarily with her apron strings, then hesitantly opened her mouth.

"Um... then the knights must have met Darun too."

Her twisting body and the faint flush rising on her cheeks revealed excitement she couldn't hide.

A young, accomplished, well-mannered son of a power figure stirring the hearts of many village women was, in a way, inevitable.

Having easily gauged her feelings, Iyu continued the conversation.

"...Of course we met him. He seemed to have excellent character."

"Obviously!"

Belgia's eyes widened as she explained how kind Darun was to others, how skillfully he filled Kelgrida's absence when she had many external duties. All the while declaring passionately that his work was perfect, truly lacking nothing as the next leader.

Then, realizing she'd dumped too much information on customers, she cleared her throat with an awkward face.

"Ahem! I talked too much about personal matters. So have you chosen your menu?"

Instead of continuing with Belgia, Iyu turned to the child beside her.

"Did you pick what you want?"

During the long conversation, Tamia, who'd been ready to bury her face in the menu, pointed solemnly at one item.

[Rock Turnip Salad]

And Iyu smoothly moved the child's short finger down one space, like someone who'd never witnessed such a thing.

[Nut Salad]

"Nut salad, good choice. Is this one enough?"

The child tilted her head but soon agreed without much question.

Iyu wanted to go along with Tamia's wishes whenever possible, but this couldn't be helped. In the past, the rock turnip she'd eaten in this village had tasted absolutely terrible—no, distinctive.

"Nut salad, sautéed flat mushrooms, and smoked mountain goat, please."

"Yes! Just a moment!"

Belgia withdrew quickly and put in the order promptly. But the restaurant bustled with guests who'd come to enjoy meals or drinks besides the lodging guests.

'We'll have to wait a while.'

While waiting for the meal with a relaxed mind, Iyu listened to the noisy conversation pouring from all directions.

Then suddenly one rough voice caught her ear.

"Hey, you're drinking too much. Shouldn't you be heading back?"

"Bah, who's going to snatch up an old man like me?"

"What carefree talk... Have you already forgotten the seventh missing person? He was about your age, I think."

At the words she'd been waiting for, Iyu subtly pricked up her ears.

This was exactly why she hadn't clarified her identity, why she'd insisted on the inn, why she'd kept talking to the server.

'Information gathering.'

In her past life, she'd been practically confined to Kelgrida's estate, unable to properly investigate the "accident" that had occurred in the village.

In that sense, this inn was the most suitable place to obtain raw information.

The men's conversation flowed in the direction she'd hoped.

The man with a bushy beard drained the ale filling his glass in one gulp, then snorted.

"Well, weren't they all people who walked deep into the mine on their own! I'll never go near that place no matter how drunk I get, so no problem!"

"Still, drinking too much at a time like this is a bit..."

A middle-aged man wearing silver-rimmed glasses looked down uncomfortably at the pile of empty glasses rolling across the table.

Apparently annoyed by that cautious attitude, the man across from him snatched away his companion's drink and shouted.

"If you won't drink it, give it here! It's just an accident from carelessness, but everyone acts like someone's snatching people! The others are all the same! When the sun sets, they all lock their doors and don't come out!"

She already knew the fact that dwarves were excessively wary of outsiders was precisely because of the repeated disappearances.

But why did they fear "people" rather than the darkness located in the mine?

As if the cause of the disappearances wasn't just "darkness"...

Kalix, who'd been eavesdropping on their conversation knowingly or unknowingly, suddenly interjected into their discussion.

"If it's such a dangerous place, couldn't you just restrict people's access?"

"Ha, what would an outsider know?"

The man with glasses looked them over crookedly.

"The place where the darkness appeared is the mine that produces orichalcum's main ingredient!"

Orichalcum was a substance with hardness and sharpness incomparable to any other metal, traded at the highest price among weapons dwarves produced.

"Tsk, only the poor suffer. To put food in their families' mouths, they'd have no choice but to enter hell's entrance."

Moreover, since this was a village built on a rock mountain, there was no real way to make a living except making weapons. If circumstances were difficult, all the more inevitable.

Iyu recalled the child she'd met right after arriving in the village.

According to her memory, most victims were breadwinners supporting elderly and young family members, or people without guardians.

So their words about being desperate for money had some logic. However...

"Still, isn't it a bit strange that there are eleven victims? They must have known that if they disappeared, only young family members would be left behind."

"That's..."

They fell silent, unable to offer much rebuttal.

Perhaps the reason they were wary of "people" was because they too sensed something strange.

The men who'd subtly averted their gazes soon cleared their throats awkwardly.

"Still, Kelgrida brought back a solution, so things should get better now."

"From what I heard, even that didn't sound too reliable... Well, if the darkness really disappears, people should stop vanishing too."

The men raised their glasses again, discussing a quite hopeful future.

And Iyu, who was precisely that "solution," listened to their fantasies while thinking things like 'Their instincts are rather sharp?'

Either way, the unreliable-looking savior truly had no intention of eliminating the darkness.