Chapter 52 – Citadel City Gantz Part 1
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Translator: SFBaka
Editor: Thor’s Stone
I woke up to the sound of an alarm. I checked the situation out with the virtual HUD. Dammit! Orcs huh. It’s still dark outside. These guys are really full of it even though they’re just bipedal pigs!
I can’t just ignore them, so I took a light magic tool and my rifle and headed out. They were still two-hundred meters out, but they were clearly heading toward the camp. So, there are a total of fifteen men. Hm? Should I even count them as men? Oh well.
It’ll be awkward seeing corpses near the camp when dawn comes, so I guess I’ll intercept them. I placed the light magic tool a hundred meters away from camp and went out to meet the orcs. It looks like those orcs already noticed the camp, so they were running straight toward it.
But the running speed of orcs can’t be said to be fast by any means. They were about as fast as an average non-strengthened human, or maybe even slower.
It was a few more minutes before daybreak, so it was still pretty dark outside, but the monsters still appeared clearly before my nanom-enhanced vision, and I swiftly locked-on to them all. When they were just twenty meters ahead of my position, I released several high-speed versions of the Flame Arrow spell and instantly downed all fifteen of them.
It’s a hassle harvesting the magic stones on my own. Guess I’ll just have everyone help out once the sun is out. There’s no hurry anyway.
Man, I sure woke up at an awkward time. The sky was already starting to brighten. Oh well. I better just start preparing breakfast.
There’s still some rice left from yesterday’s meal. I stored them inside an airtight container, so the rice should still be good. If I steam them a little bit, they should be good to go. And there’s still some salt-grilled salmon left as well. I’ll just make some onigiri with the salt-grilled salmon as filling. And I’ll prepare some mushroom soup with the katsuobushi as soup stock to go with the onigiri. I don’t have anything else to do anyway.
Once dawn finally came, the girls started waking up.
“Good morning, Alan.”
“Oh, good morning, Selena.”
“These are… rice rolled into ball shapes?”
“Um, right. I’m molding them into shape. It’s a nice dish called onigiri. Alright, that’s all of them.”
I finished making twenty servings of large-sized onigiri. Since it looks like everyone’s awake already, I should serve breakfast.
“Alan, you rolled the rice into shape?”
“Um, that’s right. I shaped them and filled them with the salt-grilled salmon from yesterday’s dinner. This dish is called onigiri. It’s morning so I made something simple to eat. This is a dish you can eat by hand. Okay then. Go ahead and dig in, everyone.”
I picked one up and ate it to show them how it’s done. Mm. Since I steamed the rice a bit, they remained fluffy and were warm to the touch. The saltiness is just right as well. Delicious.
“This onigiri is delicious! It has a simple and rustic feel to it.”
“This soup is so tasty as well!”
After hearing Sharon exclaim in delight, the rest of the girls picked up their soup and took some sips.
“This is–? What a delicate and refined flavor!” Arista praised.
“Yes, it’s very delicious,” Natalie seconded.
“There’s plenty more soup to go around, so don’t hesitate to ask for seconds everyone.”
All the girls ended up asking for seconds.
“Fuu. I ate a lot this morning as well.”
“I see… With these dishes, it’s no wonder you all overeat often,” Karina concluded.
“Sorry to ask you this so early in the morning, but some orcs came before dawn. There were quite a bit of them so can I count on you to help harvest their magic stones.”
“”Understood!””
“If it’s alright with you all, shall we help out as well? Let us at least help out with this,” Karina offered.
“I see. Alright, thanks for the offer.”
“So where are they, Alan?”
“Oh, they’re just over there. Let’s go.”
“This–!? Just how–!? …Did you kill them all by yourself, Alan?”
“Well, yeah,” I answered while stabbing an orc corpse with my sword. Since orc bodies were quite large, the bladeknife is not long enough to make deep cuts.
Mm, how gory. I wonder if there’s a magic tool that can extract magic stones? Even if there is, I can’t even begin to imagine what magic circle would be used to activate it.
Since everyone helped out, we managed to finish collecting all the magic stones quite fast. Now we’ll just need to take care of the corpses. Then we can resume traveling.
“Should we just leave the camp as it is?” Karina asked.
“Yeah. We can also just destroy the earthen huts, but they may prove useful to other travelers on the road later on, so we better leave them as is.”
“I see. That certainly is the case.”
We finally left the temporary campsite and encountered fifteen Goblins and five Gray Hounds along the way. It looks like the appearance rate of monsters really is increasing.
I made a simple fried rice dish for lunch.
At the rate we were going, we should be able to reach the citadel city of Gantz by four o’clock in the afternoon. It seems Gantz was a city several times larger than Gotania, and currently housed more than 60,000 people. I’m pretty excited.
We traveled through several intersecting highways and passed by a lot of other horse-drawn carriages and adventurers walking on foot. There was a bit of tension whenever we passed others by. That’s because there’s always a chance the other party is actually bandits in disguise. We could even be mistaken as bandits instead.
But since Elna was driving the carriage and kept greeting each group we passed by raising her hand, their guards relaxed and there were no further incidents. They probably thought there was no way a beauty like her could be part of a bandit gang.
“Alan, I see a city in the distance. Is that Gantz?”
I zoomed in using my nanom-enhanced eyes.
“Oh, it looks like it! Yep, that’s definitely Gantz. I can see why they call it the citadel city.”
It was situated within a V-shaped valley flanked by tall mountains, and the main city was in the middle of said valley. On the other side of the citadel city was the entrance to the Great Demon Forest. I see. So it’s a city built for the express purpose of guarding against intrusion by monsters.
But the city doesn’t completely seal off the valley, and there were wide open areas on either side of the city which lead to steep mountain slopes and cliffs. Due to that, there may be some monsters who manage to circumvent the city by going through those areas instead.
There was evidence that there was once an attempt to fully seal off the valley due to the unfinished ancient-looking walls. They may be relics of the far past. They may have given up on construction entirely since the cliffs were pretty steep and they thought there were no monsters that would be able to safely traverse them. They may have ultimately thought of the walls as impractical.
As we approached Gantz, I got a more detailed look of the mountains that were surrounding the Demon Forest. The mountain range that surrounded the Great Demon Forest was of an average elevation of 5,000 meters above sea level. They looked pretty big even from a distance, but their scale became even more obvious the more you approached.
After a few more minutes on the road, we finally reached the gates of Gantz. There were quite a few people and carriages lined up in front of the gate while waiting for their turn to enter the city. Looks like we better line up as well.
We waited about twenty minutes for our turn. Soldiers who were probably part of the city guards approached our carriage. I got off to meet them.
“Are you merchants? How many people are there in your group?”
“No, we’re actually adventurers. We’re the C rank Party, Shining Star. We have a total of five members, including me, and currently have three passengers with us as well.”
I then showed the leading guard my guild ID.
“Hou, so you’re C rankers huh. I think there’s no problems, but we still need to check the carriage as part of the procedures.”
“Go ahead.”
Cleria and the others also got off from the carriage. It looks like they also showed the guards their guild IDs. The guards checked the items in the carriage one by one. When the lead guard got a look at Arista’s guild ID, his eyes widened in surprise.
“Arista-sama!? There’s no mistake! Why are you riding this carriage!?”
This situation is a lot like what happened with Tarus-san.
“Our carriage was attacked by bandits. These people rescued us and let us travel back with them.”
“By the Goddess! Arista-sama’s group was supposed to arrive yesterday evening, but in the end, you never did, so Silas-sama was very worried. He’s been checking up on us often since yesterday. It seems they concluded that something untoward happened to you, so there’s a big commotion back at the Commerce Guild. Silas-sama should be in the middle of organizing a search party right now.”
“Father is!? Oh dear! We have to hurry then. Can we enter the city now?”
“Of course. Please go ahead, Arista-sama.”
“Alan-san! Please head to the Commerce Guild with all haste!”
“Gotcha. Please lead the way.”
Karina went over to the front of the carriage and guided us all the way to the Commerce Guild building. When we entered the city, it was packed with people, and my carriage driving skills were put to the test. More than half of the people out on the streets were dressed like adventurers. Luckily, the roads were pretty wide, and the people seemed used to staying out of the way of carriages, so there were no incidents.
“The large building over there is the headquarters of the Commerce Guild. Do you see that building with a lot of people crowding around out front? It’s that building,” Karina pointed out.
There were a total of about forty-something adventurers crowding around in front of the large building she pointed toward and they seemed to be listening attentively to a rugged-looking man who was speaking with a loud voice on top of the front steps.
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