What We Are All Pursuing

He really had never tasted it.

Yet he could honestly be said to have seen it.

Still, Galan could hardly tell him that he had seen it in an anime in his previous life.

Saying something like that would probably cause Glenn to conclude straight away that he had "sustained some kind of trauma in his head during battle" or the like.

----Commonly known as brain-damaged.

Although he had neither an OP system nor any overpowered, heaven-defying skills when he transmigrated here,

he still possessed an innate advantage when it came to miscellaneous pieces of information like this.

He could even tell Glenn the exact burial location of that imperial wine right now, and if he went right now, he might even be able to lend that dwarf uncle a hand.

The image of the two of them digging dirt together with a heave-ho would actually be quite comical.

Yet he still held it back.

Just in case Glenn's alcohol-induced enthusiasm made him actually believe it, he might jump straight out of bed in his excitement and subject his innocent left leg to secondary trauma.

"What about Frieren, by the way? I remember she lured that demon mage off to a very distant place at that time."

Galan blinked and suddenly remembered this matter.

"Reno said that in the end she still used the [magic that makes people float] to send us back; come to think of it, we really need to thank her properly for this."

"A single Flag was already this much trouble, and if two of them had come at us together, without Frieren we probably both would have been done for out there."

"Indeed."

Galan nodded in agreement.

The battle with Flag had burned through the absolute limits of both his and Glenn's potential.

One more tricky enemy would have plunged them into a dead end completely.

It was thanks to the appearance of Frieren, that powerful "game-breaker", that a glimmer of hope for survival was brought to the few of them.

Yet after sending them back to Rogley, Frieren had slipped away without a word, and no one knew where she had actually gone.

If possible, they still wanted to split this guild commission reward with her.

"Mentioning this, do you still remember our agreement between us?"

Galan knew that the reason Glenn had proposed the agreement to lay everything bare back then was to steady the combat morale of them both.

Amidst that kind of life-and-death battle, wanting to survive often required more than just powerful strength.

It also required a strong longing for something.

Even if it was just that tiny bit of curiosity, it could still stir up a person's desire to fight desperately to stay alive.

If one truly prepared oneself for death and gave up hope of living,

even if there remained a turning point in the battle, one might completely forfeit the possibility of survival because of that single thought.

"Forgot."

"Hmph! I knew it... Never mind, anyway you brat don't look like a good catch no matter how I look at you."

Glenn was not annoyed either, since this was within his expectations after all.

A person always needed to have some secrets of their own.

If even the secrets in one's heart could no longer be kept, one would feel that they lived life too transparently, lived it too thinly.

Seeming to be in a good mood, he hummed a cozy little tune.

This was a famous rural melody of the Northern Countries.

Whenever they encountered a harvest season or some happy event,

everyone would gather together with the cheerful accompaniment, laughing to their hearts' content and dancing to their hearts' content,

to celebrate this memorable moment.

Galan just listened in silence like this, occasionally raising his head to gulp down a few mouthfuls of wine.

He did not speak again until he had hummed the entire tune to the end.

The two of them sat in silence for a short while like this, as if they could not find any topic of conversation.

Just like this, one sitting and one lying down, quietly letting the wind from outside the window blow over them.

"You could say your contribution to defeating Flag was indispensable."

"The guild's full reward has also been divided up and received."

"Clearly you just won a big victory not long ago, yet you still look so downcast... Got something on your mind?"

Glenn looked at Galan, who was drinking alone to drown his sorrows, and raised his brow lightly.

With his experience and discernment, it was very easy for him to tell that the other party had come with something hidden in his heart from the very beginning.

"Could say that..."

"Want to find someone to vent to?"

He raised an eyebrow with a show of interest, rare gossip burning within him.

He wanted to hear what on earth could reduce this ambitious young man tangled up in secrets to the point of seeking out a middle-aged uncle to borrow alcohol to soothe his sorrows.

Although Galan understood the other man's thoughts as well,

Glenn making suggestive facial expressions at him for no apparent reason, stopping just short of jumping out of bed to pose seductively toward him,

still made him feel as though he were being maliciously harassed.

"How come I never noticed before that you're such a lewd man..."

For a moment Galan felt it was too unsightly to look at and turned his head away.

He attempted to escape the other man's "surging" gaze.

The interior of Glenn's room was extremely simple in its arrangement.

The window in the living quarters was on one side of the bed, and the late-autumn wind brought a lingering trace of biting chill as it blew in.

Yet even though he was injured, his constitution was as good as ever.

On his upper body he wore only a black sleeveless undershirt, and he lay on the bed in an uninhibited manner with his still-unrecovered left leg propped up.

Aside from a wardrobe and a few boxes holding props, there were not many things in the room that could be considered furniture.

It could even be described as crude.

It was hard to imagine this was the home of an elite-tier veteran adventurer.

According to his level and his scale of earnings, he ought to have made a killing in this line of work.

Moreover, aside from drinking, Glenn had no bad habits either.

He neither touched gambling nor womanizing.

How could he have no savings to fix up some household goods?

"Hey! You brat, I'm showing concern for you here!"

"It hurts my feelings when you give me the cold shoulder like this after I warm up to you."

Glenn took an unhappily fierce gulp of his drink.

----truly a fierce gulp, for having drunk all of two mouthfuls before and after, the bottle was already nearing the bottom.

"You're not short on money either, can't you spend a bit to properly fix up your place? Doesn't living like this lack any sense of vitality?"

Glancing sideways at Galan, he set the bottomed bottle of wine on the bedside table.

"I keep getting the feeling you think I spent the money on some bad things----Hey! Why are you still nodding!"

Letting out a long breath, Glenn placed his hands behind the back of his head and changed into a comfortable posture.

"I donated all the money I earned to the local church. There are a lot of homeless children there, whether because of the early years of war or various other reasons..."

"Anyway, raising them is a huge expense. I grew up there once myself, so naturally I have to do something for them too."

"You grew up in the church?"

Galan was somewhat surprised; after all, the two of them had known each other for so long, and this was the first time he had ever heard Glenn talk about his own past.

"Yeah, I originally lived in a small village not far from here, but many years ago the remnants of the Demon King's Army attacked it, and my older brother also died in that raid. I was one of the only ones who survived."

He paused, his deep pupils seeming to reflect the blazing pillar of fire from that day, while a flame called revenge burned fiercely in the dark.

"I don't want to let myself live too comfortably. No matter what, at least every time I look at this crude room, I can remember the days when I used to live together with my older brother..."

"Our parents died at the hands of monsters very early on. With no pillar of support in the family, we scraped by day to day relying on the kind charity of the villagers."

"Later on, in order to change the status quo, my older brother became an adventurer. He trained very hard, suffering a lot of hardships behind the scenes, but he genuinely improved the lives of the two of us."

"I remember every time he came back after collecting a commission reward, he would bring back a lot of delicious food for me from the city, and when he saw me smile, he would foolishly smile right along with me..."

He paused again, this time for even longer than before.

Galan sat quietly to one side, waiting for this man, who had suddenly burst forth with a terrifying sharpness, to speak once more.

"...Yet, even days like that became an extravagant hope for me."

"Every single one of us struggles desperately to stay alive in order to pursue something; some people do it for wealth, some for power, and others still for love."

"And from that day on, the only motivation I have for staying alive is to take revenge on the Demons, nothing more..."

Once he finished speaking, he suddenly turned his head to look at Galan.

The sharp, uncompromising edge that had been fully exposed on his body also dissipated completely.

For some reason, Galan always felt that at this moment, Glenn had suddenly aged a great deal.

That sense of life's vicissitudes, which did not belong to him to begin with, spread outward.

It was as if by speaking the secret buried at the bottom of his heart, he was like an old farmer who had finally unloaded the heavy burden from his shoulders.

He was finally able to straighten his back and draw a smooth breath.

"And what about you, Galan? What are you staying alive for?"