Vested Rights or Safety

After Finn left, Master tried to resume his work.

But the quill refused to move.

He let out a sigh and set the pen down.

Finn's offhand "Why not just move?" and the current state of affairs weighed on him too heavily.

"If I could move, I would've already."

He muttered to the empty room.

The house itself was one thing, but the land it stood on and the tool shop as a business were rights inherited from his parents.

He owned his land outright, so there was no rent to pay, and his membership in the merchant guild was what let him operate a shop in the first place.

His current standing was the same. He had proof of citizenship in this town.

Even within the Kingdom, moving to another town meant starting over as an outsider.

An adventurer could manage that well enough. All they needed was a place to sleep and quests to take.

But for a merchant, it was far harder. He'd be reduced to a traveling peddler.

Setting up a new shop like this? The cost in gold and time alone would be staggering.

And yet, the town's situation was deteriorating.

He was still maintaining his ledgers, but even that felt increasingly pointless.

The lord's son was already setting taxes at whim.

The statue was finished, yet the taxes hadn't gone down.

If anything, they looked set to go up.

No wonder people were staying away. Sales were dropping.

Cling to his vested rights and sink with the ship, or start fresh somewhere new.

If he had connections to the Kingdom's central government, he could report the situation. Unfortunately, he didn't.

The larger merchants were surely already working that angle.

Master stood and opened the safe in the back.

The debts he'd taken on were already repaid.

Including the shop's operating funds, he was sitting on roughly two thousand gold coins total.

A fortune by commoner standards, but nothing special for a merchant.

Of that sum, only about three hundred gold coins were truly at his disposal.

His fortune had just started growing, and yet life refused to cooperate.

He closed the safe.

Just then, alarm bells rang out across the town.

Something must have happened.

Sitting around wouldn't help.

He grabbed a lantern, threw on his cloak, and headed outside.

Running toward the district where the bells were sounding, he saw adventurers who'd been on patrol heading the same way.

A crowd had gathered. He could see Azu and the others among them.

"What happened?"

"… A horse was attacked."

Azu answered.

She'd nearly addressed him as Master but caught herself with so many people around.

Looking deeper, he saw a horse lying on its side.

Its belly had been torn open and eaten. Dead.

"The owner heard the horse screaming and came outside. Something was attacking it—they yelled, and it ran off."

Eventually, the guard patrol showed up, fashionably late as expected.

They questioned the horse's owner with an air of annoyance.

But as they listened, the guards' expressions changed.

Naturally, Master thought. Cats and dogs were one thing, but if it was attacking horses now, it wouldn't be strange for it to go after people next.

Whatever had attacked the horse was still unidentified, but if it wasn't dealt with soon, there would be casualties.

With so many gawkers milling about, the guards dispersed the crowd.

It seemed the guards would now be joining the patrols.

Not the most reliable bunch, but better than nothing.

Azu's group had already finished their own patrol route.

This district wasn't their assigned area.

They decided to leave it to the people in charge here and head home.

Azu took point, and the rest followed.

Despite the late hour, the town buzzed with unease after the incident.

"… How odd."

"What is it?"

Alexia spoke up.

"If there were a monster in town capable of attacking horses, my detection magic should have picked it up. Judging from the horse's corpse, it has a large build. Something with that kind of appetite couldn't possibly stay hidden forever."

Alexia was the most knowledgeable about monsters among them. If she was saying it, it held weight.

"Maybe it's not a monster."

"Come on, if it's not a monster, then what is it?"

No one, no matter how hungry, would rip open a horse and eat its belly.

"Who knows?"

Whether Elza had just been throwing that out there or not, she said nothing more.

They reached home.

Just then, something flickered at the edge of Master's vision.

He raised the lantern in that direction.

"Master, what's wrong?"

"No, I thought I saw something dart past just now."

The lantern's light swept across the road.

Enough time had passed since Finn left his room.

And these days, even the stray cats had vanished from the town.

Just a trick of the eye, he told himself and started to lower the lantern. In that instant, something black was standing right in front of him.

Taller than Master.

Before he could even lift his face, he was yanked backward.

"Get back!"

Azu had grabbed Master's shoulder and pulled him toward her.

The impact knocked the lantern from his hand.

Alexia tried to illuminate the area with light magic, but the black figure moved away.

For just an instant, the light caught its face. Its mouth was caked with blood.

And blue eyes.

The culprit that had attacked the horse, no doubt.

Those blue eyes were the same ones Azu had seen before.

"Don't chase it!"

Azu had started after the retreating figure, but Master stopped her.

Pursuing it through this kind of darkness was asking for an ambush.

Even he could tell it was far too dangerous.

"See? Not a monster."

Elza's voice faded into the night.