How to Live as a Genius Scholar in another World

Chapter 20 – Ruin Guard Request (7)

—–CROW—– 

Goblins gathered among the bushes!

We hid in the trees and observed their movements. They hadn’t noticed us yet, but they were heading towards the cave we were supposed to return to.

‘I should have expected this when I saw the footprints.’

They must have been hiding somewhere to avoid the rain, leaving footprints. Now that the rain had stopped, they were out looking for a new nest.

…Should I just attack first? I could slaughter them all.

‘No, hold on.  My inner Vectorman.’

Ten was a bit too many. I had already had several close calls due to carelessness.

If I got cocky, relying only on Beast Regression’s defense, things could go south quickly. Even if I was fine, Francesca could be seriously injured by a blind goblin.

“…What should we do?”

Francesca whispered, hiding behind the tree with me.  I replied, keeping my voice as low as possible.

“Let’s wait until they leave.  It would be better to set up traps in the cave as an alarm and wait for the next shift…”

My suggestion was cut short.  Something changed where the goblins were.

—Rustle.

Sandals landed on the rain-soaked ground.  It was a light step, completely different from the noisy footsteps of the goblins trudging through the mud.

A woman suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

Surprisingly, she descended from a point higher than my line of sight.  She landed from a nearby tree, making almost no sound.

“…Few.”

The woman with light blue curly hair muttered softly.

Then she shook her short hair from side to side.  Rainwater splattered, and some of her hair stuck to her mouth.

Veteran Trait)  Detailed character customization.  Her outfit revealed her side breasts, and the rain had soaked through, making her underwear clearly visible.  It was a Narmer-Nile style sleeveless dress, like something a dancer would wear.

‘A Narmerian?’

I tensed up at the appearance of the unknown woman.

She had the distinct aura of a veteran adventurer, a total badass. In this world, skimpy clothing implied high natural defense.

Her thin, flowing outfit was a display of confidence that attacks from weaklings wouldn’t even faze her.

Her expression was blank, making it impossible to guess what she was thinking.  Every move she made exuded the boredom of a veteran on a daily quest.

“Kyak!! (Food!!)”

“Kyak!! (Food!!)”

But the green brats had no ability to recognize a veteran.  They confronted the veteran woman, who had silently descended from a height that would have killed them if they had fallen, with their stone tools.

The result was obvious.

—Whip!

Crack!!!!

The woman’s weapon was a whip.  The short, riding crop-like weapon extended like Ruyi Jingu Bang when she swung it, sweeping the area. It must have been a cash shop item.

I could have convinced myself it was just a pay-to-win item, but the power of that crazy whip was in the realm of insane destruction.

Boom!!

That was the sound of a whip being swung.

They said the tip of a whip could exceed the speed of sound at its peak, but this was beyond supersonic; it was a fucking jet. I thought a supersonic jet, whose pilot had declared a mayday and ejected, had crashed right next to me.

“…!!”

Francesca covered her mouth and trembled.  My legs also shook uncontrollably.  They said your legs would give way if you encountered a tiger, and we were in that exact situation.

Thud.

The goblins, who had experienced an instant dismemberment and quartering, rained down from the sky as ground meat.  A green brat, with only its arm and head remaining, hung from a tree, swaying.  It seemed to be beckoning me, saying, “You too, die and come here.”

It was at that moment.

“—Who?”

The veteran woman looked directly at me.

Even though I was crouching behind the bushes, our eyes met through a small gap in the foliage.  Even if someone aimed a laser pointer at me and shot a BB gun, they wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint my location so accurately.

‘Holy shit, this is scary!!’

I gave up on running.  If I ran, that 4th job skill-like thing would target my back.

Sweep—

As I forced myself to stand up and surrender… I saw Francesca, tears streaming down her face, rise.

—Smile.

Even though we were apart, she forced a smile when our eyes met.

Francesca was going to step forward in my place. Even though she might explode and die from that jet whip if the woman was a psychopath who enjoyed killing newbies!

Grab.

I grabbed Francesca’s shoulder.  And I stood up before her.  Francesca’s eyes widened.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

Step, step.

I walked out and stood before the silent woman.

It wasn’t that I was some kind of saint trying to sacrifice myself for Francesca.  The woman was a strong veteran, but there was no evidence that she was dangerous.

Whether I ran or hid, I would be screwed if the woman got angry, so hiding behind someone else was meaningless.  And I was better at talking than Francesca.

“I’m Nord from the Audhumla Guild. I’ve been on a ruin guard request in this area since yesterday, and I came out with my companion to gather some firewood.”

After explaining the situation, I gulped.  Seeing her up close, I noticed something I hadn’t before.

Glint—

The woman with light blue hair wore earrings. The left one was ordinary, but the right one was a silver plate.

Not Silver-class.  There was no way she was Silver-class with those specs. If a Silver-class was this strong, would Professor Brammaton, a Gold-class, be able to punch a hole in the stratosphere with a Dragon Uppercut?

That plate was different from ordinary silver.

It was a special metal imbued with mana.

It was the divine silver called ‘mithril.’

“Nefertiti.”

The woman with light blue hair said.

“Nefertiti of the Sekhmet Guild.”

She stated her name and fastened her whip to her waist. She had retrieved her weapon when I tried to talk to her.  I was relieved that she didn’t seem to intend to attack me.

But why was she staring at me silently after she was done?

“Um, do you have anything else to say?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, I see.  Ask me anything.”

I said, trying not to look at the traces of the jet whip.  Nefertiti, without wiping the water running down her pale skin, asked,

“Ruin.  Anything there?”

It was a question within the expected range.  There was nothing else a Mithril-class adventurer like her would ask a newbie like Nord.

Of course, I didn’t say anything unnecessary. I couldn’t risk her saying she would come to see it. If that happened, my companions would think I had brought a two-star general to the barracks.

Silence is golden, eloquence is silver.  If I was going to try my luck against mithril, it made sense to use gold, which was more valuable than silver.

“What civilization?”

“I don’t know that much…”

I genuinely didn’t know. The inscriptions on the stone tablet and the cave walls were primitive hieroglyphs. I didn’t know their origin.

A more skilled archaeological researcher might know, but it wasn’t within the scope of my studies.

“I see.”

Nefertiti gave another short reply. She seemed like a veteran who couldn’t even be bothered to type.  Old guys who had lost their enthusiasm but were still attached to the game often spoke like that.

They said veterans enjoyed chatting more than hunting, but Nefertiti seemed different.

“…Yes. I understand.”

Nefertiti stared blankly at the sky and then suddenly spoke. Her tone was so flat that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had suddenly yelled, “Newbies die!” and swung her whip.

“Then goodbye.”

Whoosh!

Fortunately, she didn’t pulverize the newbie she had just interrogated. The veteran woman disappeared right before my eyes, jumping away with silent steps, just like when she first appeared.

But even after Nefertiti left, I stood there for a while.

Chirp—

As the surroundings became quiet, insects started chirping again from somewhere.

My legs finally gave way, and I dropped to my knees.

“Holy shit… I thought I was going to die…”

I was terrified.

I wasn’t just saying it; I was truly, utterly terrified.

She was beautiful enough to make a living just on her looks, and her side breasts connected to her armpits were amazing, but all I could see was the whip. I felt like I was facing a rhinoceros with gold bars stuck in its horns.

“Nord!”

Francesca rushed out, crying.  There were beautiful women who didn’t look ugly even when crying, and Francesca was the type whose crying face was even more radiant than usual.

“Are you okay?! Are you hurt?!”

Dash!

Francesca ran towards me, moving her long, slender legs—miraculous in a way—vigorously.

But her shorter-than-average legs couldn’t handle the uncontrollable speed. Francesca tripped on a root sticking out of the ground and rolled on the dirt.

“Waaaah!”

Roll, roll—

“Oh dear. Francesca, are *you* okay?”

I caught Francesca and helped her up. I also removed the wet leaves that had stuck to her poncho. Francesca sniffled and wiped her tears.

“Why did you do that?! I’m the party leader, so it was my job to step forward and explain!”

“Well, it worked out fine. She seemed scary at first, but she was quite reasonable.”

It was a remarkably concise conversation for someone from this other world, who usually added clause after clause to every sentence, turning them into basilisks. It was even more impressive right after talking with that monk Paragon.

But that wasn’t what Francesca was concerned about.

“That person, she’s from the Sekhmet Guild!”

Francesca’s voice was very low, as if she was afraid Nefertiti might be hiding and listening.

“They don’t have a guild joining fee, they only take monster extermination and bounty hunting requests, and they worship the Goddess of Slaughter! There’s even a rumor that the guild was created by the Sekhmet cult of Narmer-Nile to spread their faith worldwide!”

“Huh?”

It was like some kind of otherworldly Freemason backstory.

I had gathered information about the Sekhmet Guild before coming to Sargardis.

The Sekhmet Guild.  As their name suggested, they worshipped Sekhmet, the goddess of Narmer-Nile, and they were a guild engaged in the monster hunting business worldwide.

But according to Francesca, they were practically an assassination guild targeting monsters and criminals.

And they were even connected to the Sekhmet cult, a political and religious group. Wasn’t this like a mafia group used by a cult to do their dirty work?

—Shiver.

The realization sent a chill down my spine.  It was like the chilling feeling of finding out that a drunkard you kicked out of your part-time job was a serial killer who had just finished serving his sentence.

“…I understand. I’ll be careful from now on.”

I said, rubbing the back of my neck.

“Let’s go back to the ruin.  I was so scared that I’m shivering, and I want to warm up by the campfire, goblins or no goblins.”

“Sniff. O-okay…”

Francesca sniffled and replied.  She didn’t object to building a campfire.

Goblins? Let them come. Even if a hundred goblins came, I wouldn’t be afraid after facing Nefertiti.

‘By the way, why was Nefertiti hunting goblins?’

That part was strange.  Nefertiti was already soaking wet from the beginning.  That meant she had been hunting goblins before the rain stopped.

Was Nefertiti cleaning up after a Sekhmet Guild adventurer who had failed to properly deal with the goblin den?

I tried to deduce the whole story, but it was futile. If she was truly a cruel criminal, her way of thinking would be completely different from ours.

There was nothing more wasteful than trying to understand evil people.

Life was too short to think about anything but good things.

***

The first thing we did when we returned was to build a campfire.

We shaved the firewood with our utility knives, leaving only the dry wood to ignite.  And as the fire grew, we carefully added the wet firewood, making sure not to extinguish the flames.

—Crackle!

“Shit! The campfire’s lit!”

After several hours of struggle, I finally succeeded in building a campfire.

“And the next shift has arrived.”

“Shit.”

The next shift arrived just as I was about to boil water on the fire.

It seemed their shift time had been moved up a bit.  They probably adjusted it to match the archaeologists’ arrival time.

Anyway, after all that trouble, the campfire I had built was passed on to the next shift without a second glance.  Life, fuck you.

“I’m Frederick, in charge of the second shift for the ruin guard request.”

A dwarf, whose name perfectly matched his appearance, showed up and announced the change of shifts.  I sat by the blazing campfire and cried, and the dwarf was shocked by the utterly ruined state of the dolmen ruin.

“What happened to the ruin? Is this okay?”

“It’s fine.  The ruin was always like this.”

“Huh? What kind of joke is that? Didn’t it become like this because it rained all night?”

“You misunderstand.  It’s not our fault.”

Ah, these fucking “-hao” speaking bastards.  Listening to them both saying “-hao” was driving me crazy.

“Don’t worry. It’s common for ruins to be damaged by wind and rain.”

I lied.  It was something an archaeologist shouldn’t say, but I said it anyway.

I was already pissed that I had to break up with the campfire I had just built after only a day, and if I had to listen to these guys talking like that, I would have turned into the Joker.

“Hmph.  Then I’ll leave it be.”

“Yes.  It’s all part of nature’s course.”

It was total bullshit, but adventurers always handled things this way during ruin explorations.  These guys basically had “let it go” as their passive skill.

They would smash large stone tablets because they were too heavy to carry, and they would bury artifacts that seemed too troublesome or unprofitable.

Restoring and researching the ruined artifacts was usually dumped on us research student slaves, so I cursed those adventurers countless times during my slave (graduate student) days.

But I wasn’t doing that anymore.

So, I was going to take it easy.

Because that was how things worked here.

—–CROW—–