Chapter 260: I Arrived at another Town of the Bay!
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The town near the river’s mouth gave one the impression of being a lot more prosperous than the town deeper inside the bay, where we stayed until just the other day, if you went by scale. Lots of ships were docked there, most likely for trade.
Basically, it screams flourishing port city at you.
“Hmm… It’s definitely thriving more than the other port town, but I guess that doesn’t mean it’s going to have some special feature making it stand out more, too. Looks like I expected too much.”
“What did you expect ‘nyway?”
“I hoped that such a prospering port town would be overflowing with an exotic flair while being a jumble of different nationalities and cultures, seeing all the trade ships anchored here. But, there’s no apparent difference to the previous port town, except for its prosperity. It’s just that I was anticipating the buildings to have unique features, various races walking the streets, and so on.”
“Hmm…,” Sword grunted and looked around himself. “Your right. It feels kinda similar to the capital. It’s flourishin’, stuff’s bein’ maintained, and you also got ships over here.”
“Yep. Well, I suppose you might actually call that the town’s special trait.”
＊
Come to think of it, this town had another peculiarity. Whenever people at the bay town Seay saw Sword’s card, they were surprised. So surprised that they arbitrarily passed the card around, rather unwilling to give it back.
But, although the official of this town certainly was surprised as well, he didn’t seem overly happy about Sword’s visit. If anything, he looked troubled instead.
Sword didn’t show it on his face, but he clearly felt suspicious of this. However, he ignored it as it’d be better to not kick up a fuss, seeing how we brought Shikibu with us.
＊
Even as we thought that things seemed somewhat strange, we headed to the guild first. I had Leemon and her party go out shopping in the meantime.
I mean, they’re good at that kind of stuff. I told them to haggle for anything that looks like it’s unusual while using the shopping trip for some sightseeing. When I further told them that they’re free to buy anything they want while only getting back to me if it’s expensive stuff, they happily dashed away.
Given that Leemon has that skill of hers which tells her what’s good, I’m actually looking forward to what she’s going to find.
＊
Sword introduced himself at the reception.
“I’m Sword of the S-Rank adventurer party 【Allrounders】. Please get the guildmaster for me.”
The hustle and bustle inside the guild died down.
…What’s with this reaction, though? The people here looked like they were frozen.
Sword started to increasingly feel suspicious of this whole situation, too.
After having stiffened up for a moment, the receptionist blurted out, “P-Please wait a moment,” and retreated inside the guild, as if fleeing in panic.
“…Sure doesn’t seem like we’re welcome ’round here. This place feels exclusive in a way that’s somewhat different from Mine Town Sorb,” Sword whispered into my ear.
I nodded, “I agree. I wonder if some sort of trouble is brewing.”
I’m totally smelling an incident here! So exciting!
When I broke into a broad grin reflexively, Sword glared at me, but immediately afterwards smiled himself.
“Hmm?”
Since I hadn’t foreseen him responding like that, I ended up faltering somewhat.
“You bein’ here with me is promisin’. I mean, your clearly rejoicin’ over us not bein’ welcome.”
I see. Sword’s malice detector has apparently been triggered in some way, but seeing me rejoice over it, he stopped worrying, huh?
“It’s exciting, isn’t it? The air is teeming with the smell of trouble that would usually avoid me, you know?”
Sword stroked my head with a laugh.
＊
We were invited over to the guildmaster’s room. Up until this part, everything played out as usual.
“…The adventurers of our town are in good shape, so we don’t really have any requests we’d like you to handle.”
However, those were the very first words leaving the guildmaster’s mouth.
“I see. We don’t mind in particular, you know? It ain’t like we’ve gotta finish requests at any cost or somethin’ like that. So far as it goes, we’ve simply come here since your side told us to show our faces whenever we’re near a guild.”
Sword shrugged his shoulders while I tilted my head in confusion.
“It’s wonderful to hear that all is peaceful. For me personally, it makes this town boring, though.”
The guildmaster’s face cramped up.
“If a leviathan showed up from beyond the horizon, or at least something at the level of a kraken…I’d even be fine with pirates…if the ocean’s surface was covered by a huge pirate fleet of around a thousand ships, I’d be happy, but…well, no helping it.”
As I added these words, the guild master’s face shifted to shock instead. Seeing his reaction, Sword chuckled.
The guildmaster cleared his throat after noticing Sword’s smile.
“…As you might expect, such incidents would be cases where we’d have to rely on S-Rank adventurers, but…”
“No need for that,” someone interrupted the guildmaster’s words.
Once I looked in that direction…a man was pulling a striking pose of casually leaning against the door’s frame.
I wonder what it is. It’s a development that’s fairly fresh and new, but for some reason it gives me the creeps.
(TL: This whole arc plays on a Japanese word game. So I’ll explain it now and here to get it out of the way, and you’ll need to remember it over the coming days.
Many feelings in Japanese are expressed by temperature. Hot feelings are passionate, crazy about something, enthusiastic, exciting…basically all stuff that makes your blood boil (to put it in a more Western language friendly terminology). A mother smiles at her child warmly, so warmth stands for not-so-hot emotions like kindness, pleasure, etc. Cold feelings, on the other hand, can be rejection, disappointment, indifference (cold-hearted), fear…basically all bloodcurdling stuff. This is also the idea behind telling ghost stories during summer. Your feelings go cold (creepy), so it’ll cool you from the heat (yep I know it’s bullshit, but that’s how beliefs generally work).
In this sentence, I used “gives me the creeps” for “cold feeling.” If something cold makes your feelings go down in temperature like in this case, it points towards someone dampening the mood by being lame, unfunny, creepy, and so on. This expression of temperature will reappear across this arc, so bear it in mind.
By the way, another, more-common temperature-trope you’ll encounter in anime/manga is lukewarm (some translate it just like that but that’s mostly lazy since Western languages don’t use temperature for emotions so much) as emotional indicator, which doesn’t play a role here but I’ll mention it for completion’s sake. It basically means a half-baked emotional investment into something. E.g. you can’t get excited about something but you’re not totally against it either. It can also have other implications but those are contextual)
“As long as I, the great Shining Lightning Star, also called 【Extreme-Speed Star Sword】, reside in this town, nothing will ever get close to it, no matter what monster it might be. After all, I am the 『Next Generation’s S-Rank Adventurer』!
Heeh, so he’s an S-Rank adventurer, huh? There’s quite a few of them around, I got to say.
Still, what’s with the 『Next Generation’s』 part? And what are those chills which are assailing me?
＊
Looking at my arms, I noticed that I had suddenly gotten goosebumps.
“Sword… Somehow it seems like I don’t feel good. Look at this.”
Sword looked at my arm, just for his quizzical look to change into one of shock.
“Hey! You alright?”
“I don’t know.”
Sword became flustered when I shook my head.
“I see. I didn’t know that other S-Rank adventurers existed. The only ones I knew of are 【Peerless Strength】 and 【Bloody Witch】. If your goin’ to hold an S-Rank exam over here, I’d like you to tell us the time since I’d like her to take it as well. …However, we’re gonna pull back for today. It seems like she’s not feelin’ good.”
After rattling this down, he picked me up in his arms, rushed out of the guild at a tremendous speed, and carried me all the way to Char.
“You fine?”
“Hmm… Everything was okay until we arrived at this town, but after we entered the guildmaster’s room and that guy showed up, I gradually started to feel cold, and as soon as that guy opened his mouth, I suddenly felt shivers and got goosebumps.”
He put me to sleep in my bed.
“I was convinced that your pretty tough, but maybe the exhaustion has caught up with you? I mean, say what you want, but you’ve been workin’ all the time without much of a break. Get some rest, ‘kay?”
“Uh huh…”
I grabbed Sword’s hand.
“Mmh?”
“If you have no request, stay by my side please.”
Sword smiled at my request, commenting, “It sure is rare for you to ask gettin’ pampered.”
Then he sat down on the bed’s edge. His hand was cold at first, but became warmer as I kept clasping it.
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Translation Notes: