I Can’t Run Away From the Girl Who Saved Me

38 – Corpse Pickup (5)

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pick up corpses.

It sounded like an ominous sound right from the name, but after hearing her explanation, it wasn’t that strange.

Dangerous monsters were infested, and this forest, where the miasma near the castle had not yet gone, was extremely dangerous, but there were no monsters with valuable resources or precious materials.

That’s why there weren’t many crazy people who dared to invade the forest to earn a penny.

However, even in this forest, which has long since been cut off from people, it was not that there were no people who risked their lives to pass through.

I couldn’t afford to go back far from the forest, and I couldn’t afford to buy firewood.

Or, like me, to avoid someone’s pursuit.

Brave and stupid humans who set foot in this hellish place for various reasons were rare, but they certainly did exist.

And most of those humans were adventurers.

“Most adventurers are those who live a low life.”

Sylvia ridiculed that many people had fantasies about the profession of an adventurer.

It is said that there are many idiots who know that gold coins will drop when they catch a monster.

Yes, there is a privilege of being able to see indescribable scenery while traveling around the world, but Mr. Sylvia slowly explained how expensive it is to pay for such trivial scenery.

Of course, the job of an adventurer is not a job to make money by hunting monsters.

As the name suggests, adventurers, they have to bring valuable resources or materials obtained from adventures all over the world and ‘sell’ them to finally get a reward suitable for their life-or-death journey.

Of course, most of the money that fell into their hands was just too pitiful a pittance to be worth their lives, but in a way it was natural.

There weren’t that many cases where monster materials were essential, and subjugation requests were barely received one by one only when the number of monsters increased significantly every few years.

Therefore, most adventurers’ main means of earning money was to travel all over the place and sell the things they bought in other areas.

Come to think of it, on the day of the Harvest Festival in the Goldfield Manor, it was easy to see adventurers carrying large backpacks selling strange things they had never heard of or seen on a cloth on the floor.

In other words, the job of an adventurer was basically a peddler who knew how to fight monsters.

The ‘picking up corpses’ that Mr. Sylvia said meant picking up necessary items from the backpacks of adventurers or people who lost their lives without being able to get out of this forest.

She said she usually goes out to collect corpses about once every half year.

The wine we drank yesterday and the tea leaves that Mr. Sylvia cherished and only drank on special occasions were also items brought from the backpacks of dead adventurers.

At first, I was shocked when she said that she searched for the belongings of the deceased, but Sylvia said that no one dares to enter this forest to retrieve corpses or things, and that it would be much better to use them for things that would be thrown away anyway. I couldn’t help but nod my head.

It was because the life in the forest was too poor for me, who lived with the grace of civilization to question morality.

It was cumbersome to drink water because there was no simple brass cup, there was no nail to fix the broken door, and at least there was no scrap of cloth to make clothes.

In particular, the problem of lack of clothes was serious.

Sylvia only had a cloak, a robe, a nightgown, and a thin tunic.

I also had no clothes to change into, so I was wearing a tunic that Mr. Sylvia had stocked up and a ripped jacket and pants I had been wearing sloppily patched up.

Sylvia’s clothes were worn out due to her long life in the forest, and I was in a mess from the carriage accident.

Even the clothes that were available were in this condition, but if even these clothes were worn out, then, like a primitive man, he would have to make clothes out of leaves and leaves.

“Are you ready?”

Sylvia said as she tied a large empty sack around her waist.

Our plan was for Ms. Sylvia to go around picking up bodies while I was collecting burial items for Layla in the wagon.

I nodded, making sure the dagger at my waist was in good condition.

“It’s farther than you think, your legs will hurt, so prepare your mind to some extent.”

“Ha… did you forget that I walked down that street with a broken leg?”

“… that’s really weird no matter how you think about it, Ash, it’s not like mental strength or anything like that, I can only say it’s a miracle.”

“hahahaha…”

“…Now, watch out for bears, and let’s go.”

We joked lightly, but the tension did not go away.

I gulped and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead with my hand.

Now, it’s time to enter the forest.

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Mr. Sylvia said that it would take quite a while for us to get back to the cabin from our errands, and advised us to prepare something to drink.

Following her advice, I diluted the wine left over from yesterday’s drinking and poured it into two leather buckets.

One belonged to me, and the other belonged to Mr. Sylvia.

To be honest, at the time, I only thought it meant that it would take a long time to pick up a corpse.

Since so few people enter this forest and the forest is so vast, it will not be easy to find one or two corpses.

That’s what I thought.

However, her advice did not mean that.

“Uhhhhh, are you still far away?”

“Hmm… I think we’re halfway there.”

“…crazy,”

“…I’d like to say let’s take a little break, but if we do that, we won’t be able to go home today.”

“Heh… Huh… Let’s go.”

I think I’ve already walked for more than two hours, but I still haven’t arrived.

This was completely unexpected.

On the night of the carriage accident, how did I get to the cabin?

That I led that broken body down a road that required a walk of nearly four hours each way?

Even then, my steps must have been much slower than now?

It’s not clear because it’s a painful memory, but even if I look back on that faint memory, it was definitely midnight when I arrived at the cabin.

It was the middle of the night, so I was able to walk towards the dimly lit cabin lights.

Breathing heavily, I slowly looked back, but the cabin was no longer in sight.

“Whoa… haa… really… uh… it was a miracle…”

I muttered like that.

Sylvia-san seemed to have been thinking the same thing, and agreed with my words.

“I told you. It’s a strange thing.”

What’s really strange is that you’re not out of breath at all even after walking this distance.

I wanted to say that, but I gave up because my lungs didn’t have enough air.

“Ha… Damn it.”

Tension from fear and fatigue from extreme aerobic exercise.

My whole body was soaked in sweat, as if I had just jumped into a river.

Sylvia is not yet sweating a drop.

Maybe he’s just walking slowly because of me, but he’ll move much faster than usual.

If so, did Sylvia’s colleagues, including Maria’s sister, move at her speed?

Once again, I was able to realize that the demon lord subjugation party was a collection of monsters.

And at the same time, I realized what a ridiculous disaster the existence of the Demon King who destroyed such a party was.

Recognizing the time seemed to make me lose more strength, so I walked silently, staring at the floor.

I don’t know how much time has already passed.

My legs, especially my left leg, which had been damaged a lot, creaked.

Suddenly, in my head, ‘Wow, f*ck, what should I do when I go back.’ The moment I thought of that.

“Ash, there you are.”

Sylvia-san pointed somewhere with her finger.

As I moved my gaze along her fingertips, I saw a collapsed carriage.

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I approached the wreckage of the fallen carriage and sat down on my back, and Mr. Sylvia smiled at me.

“You’ve worked hard, drink some water now.”

I hurriedly opened the water bag and poured it into my mouth.

Clearly, it was cool and sweet cheap wine yesterday, but now it is close to a lukewarm, sour, mysterious liquid.

But as much as I felt so grateful for that, I was very thirsty.

The feeling of the slightly sticky liquid slowly wetting my dry lips and throat was truly ecstatic.

“Whoa! Heh, I will live.”

“Ahahahaha, it must have been very difficult.”

“Ha… I thought I was going to die.”

“Even though the bones protruded through the flesh, it was a path that I walked along, and it was an eomsal.”

“…that’s really strange.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

Sylvia sipped the liquid in the water bag with a relaxed look and looked around.

Like finding a deer from afar, can we find the body?

After putting my head on the carriage, I was slowly catching my breath.

The floor of the wagon that my head touched felt somehow soft, and I turned around to see that the wagon was covered with moss.

It’s been over a month since the carriage was left unattended, so it’s not unusual for moss to grow, but did moss grow so quickly?

Well, since I hadn’t seen much moss in my life, it wasn’t an answer I could know.

After slowly catching my breath, and only when my thumping heartbeat stopped, I slowly looked up at Mr. Sylvia.

She was staring at somewhere far away.

Her expression hardened.

“Sylvia? What’s wrong?”

When I spoke to her, Sylvia-san slowly looked back at me and smiled once.

She usually smiled a lot, but today that smile looked a little awkward.

Maybe they even found a body.

“Nothing.”

“…is it so?”

“Yeah, that’s right Ash.”

“yes?”

“I’m going to do some searching around here for the body. You take the things you need from the wagon.”

I was startled and replied.

“Oh, are you leaving me?”

“You will never find it on your own. I have to go around alone to find it properly.”

His shortness of breath gradually subsided, and since he was a little livable, fear crept in again.

Not to mention, this place is like a nightmare to me.

However, Sylvia-san’s words also had some truth.

To put it bluntly, it was that I was annoying.

Certainly, if Silvia-san was alone, she might have arrived here a long time ago.

“Ha, but…”

“don’t worry. If you think something might happen, scream and go inside the wagon wreck and cast a protective spell and hold on.”

“If it were that bear’s front paws, the protection magic wouldn’t last for even a minute…”

“that’s enough.”

Silvia-san slowly approached me and bowed her head.

Then, he put his hand on my shoulder, which was trembling with anxiety, and answered with a smileless face.

“I will definitely come in one minute.”

“…”

“I will never let you die. Trust me. ash.”

Sylvia said in a firm tone.

It didn’t make sense to me that she would definitely come in a minute when I didn’t know how far she might go.

However, I stopped nodding my head at the tone that was so sure.

“It’s nice, it’s nice.”

Sylvia smiled and patted my head.

Then, suddenly, he brushed my bangs off and lightly kissed my forehead.

“Oops!”

“It’s the curse of a warrior who never dies.”

she said with a grin.

I clutched my forehead and grumbled with a red-hot face.

“…In that case, you have to say it’s a spell or a blessing. Or something that gives you courage, something like that.”

“Ah, that’s right. Huhu, I’m so used to curses.”

After talking stupidly with me, she slowly stood up.

Tuk-tuk, shaking both legs and jumping lightly in place, she disappeared from sight in an instant.

I thought it was teleport magic for a moment, but when I thought about it, she said that she could only use basic magic.

It wasn’t until I felt the dust rise and shake my bangs lightly that I realized she was just running.

“…One minute should be enough.”

I closed the lid of the water bottle and slowly got up.

To find a burial item to present to her younger sister and a keepsake left by her parents.

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