Chapter 86: Old Records

The material for proper adventurers was completely different from the material for beginner adventurers he had been consulting up to now. He had thought of it as something like information on dangerous magical beasts and rare medicinal herbs from areas beginner adventurers never set foot in—but a great deal of it simply couldn’t be classified. Reports, bullet lists written in untidy handwriting, things like travel journals kept during escort requests: the formats weren’t consistent at all.

“…So there’s information on both magical beasts and medicinal herbs written in here…”

“What are you going to do with that one? File it under magical beasts?”

“If I do that the medicinal herb information gets buried… Ah, there are ones with both boar types and dog-and-wolf types written in them too… Hmm, put it off till later, I suppose…”

“‘Later’? Which category is that?”

“That’s not what I meant… ah, maybe I should make that a category.”

He settled on the blue feathers, which they hadn’t used yet, for the “later” classification. As it turned out, the “later” material piled up in a mountain almost at once, so—wanting to read it through properly at some point, but needing to clear space—he decided that once he had embedded a blue feather he would put it straight back on the shelf set aside for “later.”

“Ah, a map… A place where Silver Bell Grass grows in numbers, huh…”

The roughly drawn map looked as though it carried important information, and it made him feel excited.

He held back the urge to become absorbed in it and went on classifying—until a phrase caught his eye and stuck.

“Lord Cain slays this Black Fang Boar with the sword.”

“…Sword?”

He read the document again. The title was “Record of the Third Eastern Forest Magical Beast Outbreak.”

The writing was less a report than a kind of memorandum.

“A herd of Black Fang Boars emerged from the middle layer of the Eastern Forest. Lord Cain Cream took the field against them himself.”

Cain.

The same name as his grandfather.

(It says “lord,” so is this about Grandfather? Or an ancestor from much further back…)

“His Lordship runs the great Black Fang Boar through with the spear.”

Up to there it was natural enough.

His grandfather Cain had the Spear Arts skill.

“Immediately after, a small Black Fang Boar charged from the flank.

The spear had bitten into the bones of the great Black Fang Boar and wouldn’t come free.

Lord Cain slays this Black Fang Boar with the sword.”

“…He was using a spear, but he used a sword too…?”

Ren had said it out loud without meaning to.

“Ren, did you find something interesting?”

The words Ren had spoken aloud must have reached his ears, because Victor came over to talk to him.

Ren looked up with a complicated expression.

“Mm… It looks like an old record of a magical beast subjugation. It says the spear got stuck, so he brought it down with a sword…”

“Right. And?”

“Whether he used a spear and a sword at the same time…”

“If you can use it, you use it, don’t you? I’ve got the Rod Arts skill, but I use a knife sometimes.”

“Mm…”

Ren’s own skill was “Small Box,” but he used a bow, and he had made a simple spear too. It was as Victor said. If you could use it, of course you used it. Among the adventurers there were people who carried all kinds of weapons. He had seen people with swords hung at their hips, though whether they had a skill for it was unknown.

What had snagged in Ren’s mind, though, was the record of a person who seemed to be his grandfather using a “sword.”

Ren had been told over and over that training in Archery or Swordsmanship when you had no skill for it was pointless. And yet his grandfather—or an ancestor with the same name as his grandfather—had used both spear and sword.

Ren himself didn’t think that doing anything outside your skill was pointless. In fact, he could feel that his bow and arrow were getting better.

(Why do people say that doing anything besides your skill is pointless… Could it be that Grandfather thinks differently…)

Whether the person in the document who used spear and sword was his grandfather himself, he couldn’t tell. He looked back through the document, but he could find no information on such things as how many years ago it had happened.

(…If I asked Grandfather, would he tell me…)

Why it was said that training at anything other than your skill was pointless.

For a moment the thought of asking his father crossed his mind—but when he remembered his father’s disappointed face on learning the skill Ren had been granted, and the hard expression on it when he announced he wouldn’t pay Ren’s tuition, his chest went tight, as though it were being squeezed. Anything to do with skills, he didn’t feel he could ask about at all.