Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 57: An Unexpected Development
Today Tauro was gathering medicinal herbs, a standard F-rank quest and one of his greatest specialties.
He possessed [True Eye], an ability he had learned through the garbled skill.
Originally, it had been an appraisal eye specialized for objects.
After he acquired [Plant Knowledge], however, the two abilities linked together and allowed him to identify the medicinal herbs specified in a request.
[True Eye] had also linked with [Presence Detection], enabling it to react to people and monsters within a certain range.
Tauro didn’t know whether [True Eye] was evolving or merely unlocking parts of its original power, but there was no denying its usefulness.
He was steadily gathering herbs with [True Eye] when several figures appeared within [Presence Detection].
One was human. Judging by their silhouettes, the four behind him were goblins.
The man was being chased.
Tauro erased his presence with [Presence Concealment] and rushed toward them.
The fleeing man was Bob. He staggered along in a daze, barely conscious.
Deciding the situation was critical, Tauro shot two goblins in rapid succession.
He immediately invoked [Majesty], then finished off the two remaining goblins while they stood frozen in fear.
“Bob! Are you all right?”
When Tauro turned, Bob had collapsed.
A goblin had stabbed him, but that wasn’t the only problem.
The knife still clutched in the goblin’s hand appeared to be coated with poison. Bob had apparently been wounded by it, and the consciousness he had maintained until moments ago was gone.
Tauro hurriedly took a potion from [Magic Storage] and poured it over the wound to stop the bleeding. Then he forced an antidote potion into Bob’s mouth.
“I’m still worried. Better safe than sorry…”
Tauro murmured and cast [Status Ailment Recovery].
He had never tried the spell on another person, so he didn’t know how effective it would be. Still, he reasoned that using it alongside the antidote should help.
After a short while, Bob’s breathing stabilized. The treatment seemed to have worked.
Once he was certain, Tauro carried Bob on his back and returned to the village.
An eleven-year-old child had emerged from the forest carrying a grown adventurer.
Normally, such a feat would have drawn praise. This village reacted differently.
The villagers treated it as a ridiculous farce in which one outsider had failed his quest and nearly died, only to be carried home by another outsider who happened to be a child.
“What are those outsiders doing?”
“I’m glad he didn’t die, but really—why are they here?”
“Honestly. What a commotion.”
Some villagers made heartless remarks.
The atmosphere was so hostile that Tauro hesitated even to say that he had saved Bob. He was inwardly shocked.
This seemed to go beyond ordinary wariness toward strangers.
The entire village felt raw and irritable, and that hostility was directed most fiercely at outsiders.
Tauro ignored the comments and took Bob to the doctor.
The doctor said the treatment had been prompt and the blood loss minimal, so Bob appeared to be out of danger.
He added that Bob was merely asleep and told Tauro to wake him and take him home.
The doctor’s manner was prickly as well.
By then, Tauro was convinced that the village’s atmosphere was truly dreadful. Still, he did as instructed, tapping Bob’s shoulder and calling to him until he woke. Tauro then helped the dazed man back to the inn.
“Tauro? A goblin poisoned me, and then…”
“I found you after you collapsed and brought you back. Don’t worry. I treated both the wound and the poison, so you should be fine.”
“I see… Sorry. I caused you trouble.”
“Not at all. I happened to find you while gathering herbs. By the way, what quest were you working on?”
“Me? I was exterminating monsters around the shrine…”
“A shrine?”
“The village has a tutelary deity it has worshiped since ancient times. Apparently, the festival honoring it was canceled after monsters multiplied in the area.”
“So you were clearing out the nearby monsters?”
“Yeah. The extermination itself was going well, but I caught a strange whiff of trouble. I became so absorbed in investigating it that I let my guard down.”
“A strange whiff?”
“I’m a dog-person, so I trust my nose and my instincts. Both warn me that something is wrong with that shrine. I don’t mean that it literally stinks. There’s a faint trace of the same ‘scent’ throughout the village, but around the shrine it’s concentrated.”
Tauro began to suspect that the shrine might be the source of the village’s unnatural atmosphere.