I wonder when the writer will stop making me talk in the first lines of every chapter…
Sigh… I'm not even a main character!
******
…
The three then departed to the forest labyrinth entrance right after stocking up tools and equipment from the weapons and armor shop and also storing Nina's stuff back at her house.
"Those cash I got earlier was rather helpful. I bought thirty bullets, a pair of boots, and a new sword scabbard," Marco thought to himself. His arsenal consists of a gun and a single short sword. Sometimes, he would bring several more than one firearm.
"For once I thought I'm cursed for accepting a money gift from a literal ghost… it appears not eh?" Marco said as he scrunched his face in remembering the soul spirit from earlier.
The entrance is the only visible way to go in and out of the forest. There's a watch tower overseeing the road, a bridge crossing the shallow river before the entrance, a sign that says:
AREDANIAN FOREST LABYRINTH
As they approach, Aily noticed a man walking out of the forest labyrinth. "Marco, isn't that…?" Aily pointed her index finger calmly.
"Uh, wait, isn't that—shoot, what was his name again? That dude who taught me how to fix my mana sensing ability… AH! Queaz! Right, that's his name..." Marco conveyed funnily.
"Um… what is he doing here?" Marco wondered.
The hatted man walks beneath the roofing trees. He crosses the bridge, passes the watch tower, and bypasses the three without a care. Nina, Aily, and Marco only watch him in slightly puzzled. He exited the forest as if there's nothing bothers him.
Though, shortly, Queaz caught an eye to Marco.
"Hm? Oh… it's you folks again," said Queaz casually. "You folks are going into the forest?" he asked in a calm way.
"Yeah," said Marco affirming.
In one way or another, Marco felt a bit dizzy. He got confused because he remembered Queaz was at the pub a few while back and now suddenly out of nowhere he just got out of the forest.
"Huh… how odd. Did he waltz in from nowhere, perhaps teleportation?" so Marco thought. "Nay, nay, nay, what stupidity am I thinking right now?" Marco said as he waved the air with his hand, removing any nonsense in his mind.
Queaz stares with a careless sight. Though he was curious with Marco's last word, "What's the matter with you—ah, forget it," Queaz cancelled out his thoughts. His way of speaking piqued Nina and Aily's curiosity upon him.
"Anyway… if you folks gonna go in there…" he said while pointing backwards with his thumb.
"I highly advise prepare a bunch of healing items. Monsters have gone wild in there," Queaz stated with an apathetic tone. He sounded as if he doesn't care about what's going on in the forest.
Shortly, he stares at Aily.
"Hoh..." Queaz let out a breath as he glared at Aily.
Aily retaliates quickly, "W-What? Quit staring at me, you're scaring me!" she said while holding her staff diagonally in front of her in a defending stance.
"Huh? Whaddaya mean?" Queaz offhandedly asked. "I'm just looking. Is it wrong, though?"
"W-Well, it's not actually 'wrong' in a way. But your way of staring people is just… creepy," Aily stated.
"Creepy, huh?" Queaz retorted. "Why am I creepy, though? I don't feel that way…" Queaz asked casually.
"W-Well… umm… y-you… you're… AH! You sound careless, yeah! That's it! Being stared by a guy like you is just outright creepy!" Aily retorted. She has run out of words to answer back at the hatted guy.
"Hoh… is that so? Then you're being unfair, then," Queaz countered.
"W-Wha—I'm sorry, that's just plain rude of you. You can be accused of doing something bad by just staring weirdly!" Aily countered.
"Aily, that is enough, okay?" Nina halted her pouring grunts by patting her shoulder.
"But sis… he's so annoying!" Aily replied while looking back at her sister in a grumpy face.
"You're also being disrespectful to him. Please apologize to him," Nina asked her calmly.
"Sister…!" Aily pouted.
"Aily~!" Nina smiled widely, her smile appeared creepy for an instance. "You will apologize to him, okay~?"
Shortly, Queaz murmurs, "I see 'now' that, humans are actually weird,"
"Humans are not weird. YOU are!" Aily retorted while quickly tilting her head towards his direction.
"—Maybe," Queaz retorted quickly. "Maybe, either all humans were like that or it's just you being plain stupid and childish. Heh," Queaz chuckled mockingly and deliberately walks away, leaving the three.
"W-Why you…" Aily clenched her fists and gritted her teeth in anger. "Oookay, okay, that's enough, Aily. We've got better things to do," her sister stopped her from continuing her babblings.
"I'm really sorry for my sister's ranting, good sir…" Nina apologized in her stead. "She still can't handle 'jokes' like that," she added.
"Ahaha… pardon us, Queaz," Marco apologized while rubbing his hand to the back of his head. Although he's already quite far Queaz simply replied by waving his hands while keeping his attention on the road in front of him.
"Humph! I don't want to meet him again!" Aily yelled childishly. "Enough already, let's get going!"
After their short heating debate, the three then began their step into the labyrinth.
Marco stated that he knew every inch of the labyrinth's area. Well, he's an explorer, that's why. They're walking onto a path where the road disappears from the ground and there are four passable lanes. Marco then quickly tells Nina and Aily to take the second path from the left.
In the next area, where now there are only two different lanes they can go through to: left or right. Roughly, monsters heavily infested this region.
Queaz was right. The monsters are wilder than they supposed to be. Slimes usually hid themselves behind the bushes and avoid encountering with other creatures, now they're bashing out into the open and charge at any creature close to them.
The three fight against several monsters. Most of them are weak, though. But relentless attacks from those wild-acting creatures make it hard to focus on all of them. Shortly, several bouncing noises approach them. Not long afterwards, a group of slimes bounced in front of them.
"Oh, pickle-in-a-barrel, now eight slimes are on to us. Just great, suuuuper great," Marco grunted exaggeratedly.
"If this keeps up, I can't stand of using my swords over and over. I must use the Arquebus!" he thought. He reached for his gun in a quick matter of seconds.
It only took 4 seconds for Marco to load the Arquebus. He then aims at the branch and...
*DAR!
A shot from Marco, the bullet was quite big until it could bust a two meters-long branch. The branch falls from four meters height onto the slimes.
*BAMMM!
"Splendid!" said Marco. The branch squashed six slimes all at once. Two seconds, Marco has loaded another bullet and aimed directly at the slime.
*BANG! No good, the shot missed!
"We got this!" Nina shouted, "C'mon, Aily!" she called her sister. Together they casted a magic circle in green that animates 4-propeller-blade spinning. The spin gets faster until the propeller blade is unseen and casted a wind force at the slime. Nina and Aily casted in the same time,
"Twin Magic - Quick Windforce!"
Both slimes got ejected from the ground, "It's not done, yet!" Aily shouted. Aily jumps and continues casting. Shortly, a medium visible wind fades in in the shape of a curved blade.
"Severing Wind!" she casted.
The wind slashed through them diagonally, cutting all of the slimes in half, thus killing them.
"Phew, nice work, sis!" *CLAP* "You, too, Aily, and Marco, too!"
Many monsters hinder the party's movements, but after going into the left lane, they eventually encounter the group of the Knight Captain's group on a slope open terrain. They stood on the higher ground, while they're on the lower part.
It's not a nice view to look for the three. Only five of them soldiers are there, all of them are damaged. From the distance, a group of orcs armed with pickaxes can be seen rushing onto them. "One, three, no, wait, five of them! There's five of them!" Marco counted roughly.
"This isn't good…!" he stated anxiously.