The Pontar River is Safe

The first time riding a three-masted sailing ship in a fantasy world—no, "fantasy world" could be omitted. Simply put, the feeling of riding a three-masted sailing ship for the first time was wonderfully strange, as if he had been transported into the Age of Discovery. Correction: this could now be considered the eve of the Age of Discovery.

Quietly recalling the appearances and voices of Captain Hook, Captain Sparrow, Captain Li Huamei, Captain Gangplank, and the rest, Victor pondered his peculiar thoughts aboard the downstream-bound ship. The great river flowed eastward... its waves washing away all the heroes of ages past.

Without warning, Angoulême gave him a light shove from behind, nearly sending him into the river. But she grabbed the boy's belt at the same time, so it was only a scare.

"What were you thinking about?" Before Victor could get angry, the girl opened her round eyes and asked first.

"You could scare someone to death like that!... I wasn't thinking about anything." Ever since learning what the girl had been through, Victor had felt an almost fatherly tenderness toward her. He found it hard to get truly angry at her.

Angoulême stepped forward and looked at the river, putting on the air of a sympathetic older sister. "Actually, I know what you were thinking even if you don't tell me. You're upset because Zoltan doesn't like you, right?"

No, I tossed it out of my mind the moment I turned around. I didn't take it to heart at all.

"Don't be angry. He's only worried about me, and he doesn't understand you. He didn't see the expression on Ciri's face when she talked about you, so he doesn't believe you. He's just the type to overthink things."

That was perfectly normal. A child being so calculating and decisive? I'd have doubts too.

Angoulême gripped Victor's arms with both hands. "Anyway, Commander, don't mind what he said. I absolutely believe you."

A misunderstanding was a misunderstanding. It wasn't a big deal anyway. "All right. Thanks for your support, Angoulême."

"But there's something I want to discuss with you, Commander?" The girl released his arms, interlaced her fingers, and spoke in a somewhat bashful whisper.

Honestly, this demeanor was rare for her. Seeing the tomboy act like this made Victor feel rather awkward. "Let's hear it. You don't want to study today? Or do you want some pocket money to buy something?"

"No..." Drawing a deep breath, she made up her mind. "It's about business..."

Victor said nothing, merely looking quietly into her brown eyes.

"I... think that although aphrodisiacs are profitable, they don't seem very respectable..."

A thin white scar ran across the bridge of his otherwise unremarkable nose. It was faint, but clearly visible.

"Uh... what I mean is... shouldn't the Phantom Troupe be out there helping the weak, upholding justice, punishing evil, and rooting out the wicked?"

Under Victor's gaze, she spoke haltingly, but her meaning was clear enough. Thank heavens, she had realized it herself. Otherwise, Victor really would have found it awkward to point out the emperor's new clothes—after all, she went out enthusiastically every day under the Troupe's banner.

After speaking, the girl lowered her head to avoid the boy's eyes. Clearly, she knew perfectly well how much her brand-new leather armor and sharp steel sword had cost.

To that, "I agree," the boy replied simply.

"Huh!?" Angoulême abruptly raised her head and stared into his blue eyes.

His narrowed blue eyes curved with amusement. "I'm saying the Troupe won't sell aphrodisiacs anymore. We'll focus on helping the weak and upholding justice, and make a name for ourselves!"

He had been a carefree twenty-eight-year-old sailor, someone who drank deeply and ate heartily. Healthy and unburdened by family, he had skilled lovers in both Floating Harbor and Vergen. This journey to Floating Harbor—he had no idea how many times he had made it in his life—unfortunately became the end of his brief and happy existence.

It was deep in the night. The sailing ship had been secured in the middle of the river by a magical anchor. Squatting at the stern and freely discharging pollution, he stared at the black forest along the shore. Thinking of the unknown number of Squirrel Party members hiding within, ready at any moment to send an arrow flying at his throat, made every hair on his body stand on end—and his discharge became all the more hearty and smooth.

Then the sound of rushing water suddenly erupted. A thunderous BANG followed as tentacles slammed against the hull. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open as he watched a gigantic octopus, unlike anything he had ever seen, rise like a mountain. Grayish-red tentacles wrapped around the vessel layer by layer, while the wooden hull gave helpless cracking groans.

Paralyzed by terror, his entire body slackened, front and back relaxing in perfect unison as pollution poured forth like rain.

Not long after, a wildly flailing tentacle struck him. His vision went dark, and his respectable life ended plainly and simply.

At the same time, on a stretch of beach in the forest along the Pontar River.

"Fuck... which bastard said the Pontar River was safe?" Victor cursed bitterly as he staggered ashore in a miserable state.

Then he dropped to one knee, hooked his right hand around Angoulême's abdomen—bloated from swallowing too much water—and laid her across his bent thigh with her head hanging down. With one press, she sprayed water in every direction, a rainbow gushing forth.

This brat couldn't even swim... and she had made her commander go through so much trouble to save her. She was clearly lacking training.

Although people who could swim were actually a minority in this era, that did not stop Commander Victor from deciding to add another requirement for new Troupe members: they had to know how to swim.

Under the moonlight, the three-masted ship had already been mangled beyond recognition by the giant octopus monster. The width of one of that thing's tentacles was as thick as he was. One lash would turn both man and armor into a meat pancake. The thing that could deal with it was probably not a witcher, but cannons—if this era had cannons...

Or perhaps they could feed it a huge bomb!?

Shaking his head, the boy scattered his wild thoughts. Angoulême had nearly finished vomiting. She rolled over onto her back and began gasping for air.

He stood and watched the final moments of the three-masted ship. The mountain-sized octopus monster submerged beneath the water. The whirlpool of its sinking devoured the last remaining wreckage, and then moonlit ripples swayed across the surface, leaving no trace of the ship behind.

After a while.

"What was that monster?" Angoulême's voice was hoarse, and she still sounded somewhat frightened. It was not as though she had never seen monsters before. Ghouls, Nekkers, even Kikimora had failed to scare her—but something that huge was simply unfair. It was so intimidating that she could not even summon the courage to curse it.

"It looked like an octopus! Well, a very big octopus! One tentacle would be enough to feed us for days." Victor calmly smiled as he made an unfunny joke.

Clearly, Angoulême did not share Lambert's icy sense of humor. She merely glared at him in response.

Since it had not had the expected effect of relaxing her, Victor coughed twice. "Whatever it was, we'll have to walk to Floating Harbor next. Fortunately, it shouldn't be too far."

Angoulême stood up and checked the state of her equipment, then cried out, "Ah! Your magical herb pouch! Did you lose it in the water?"

Everything had happened too suddenly when they fell in, and he had been busy saving her, so Victor had not paid attention to the herb pouch. He had planned to find an opportunity to be alone for a few minutes and retrieve it, but Angoulême had noticed first.

But that was only a minor matter. The boy turned to look at the girl. The important question was, "How did you know it was a magical herb pouch?"

"Ciri told me!" the wild girl answered as if it were only natural.

Victor's face could not help growing a little warm. So she had known all along. Wouldn't all his attempts at concealment have looked utterly ridiculous in her eyes?

As for how Ciri knew, that was only to be expected. During the half year they had lived together, he had never deliberately hidden it from her. Back then, he had never imagined that one day he would leave his homeland behind.

"What else did she tell you? Did you tell anyone else?" the boy hurriedly pressed.

"When we slept together, I asked her about you, and she told me. She said her little brother had a magical herb pouch that could hold lots of things." As she spoke, she gestured a circle in front of her chest, roughly the size of one cubic meter. "You treasure it dearly and carry it wherever you go. The potion that saved me was taken from inside it."

"As for you having a magical backpack, that's the deepest secret of us Hansa. I wouldn't tell anyone even if I died." Beneath Angoulême's damp golden bangs in the moonlight, the determination in her eyes seemed only natural.

Victor was suddenly moved. Even though he would never trust others so completely or be so loyal to anyone, that did not stop him from appreciating and liking people like her.

The boy relaxed, and he also realized the blind spot in his previous thinking.

Magic in this world already included spatial-folding spells such as Extension Charms, so if people mistook his herb pouch for a magical creation, then aside from it being uncommon, it did not really matter.

The ones he truly needed to guard against and conceal it from were knowledgeable mages. They could not discover that his herb pouch had nothing to do with magic, but was instead an incredible creation of laws.

So he straightened up and held one hand palm-up. His voice was clear and bright, and his words shattered the void.

He said, "Come!"

The evening breeze rustled through the jungle, while summer cicadas chirped and trilled noisily.

He said, "Pouch, come!"

Just like that, before Angoulême's wide-eyed stare, ripples surged through the void and blossomed outward as the herb pouch appeared out of thin air in Victor's hand.

"Eh!?" A brief cry of surprise startled the Phantom Troupe, who were in the middle of a group activity, revealing that there were other witnesses to this fantastical scene.

In an instant, Victor shouted, "Stop her!" With one hand, he hooked up the herb pouch and slung it onto his back, then chased toward the source of the sound.

Even before Victor spoke, Angoulême had shot off like an arrow released from its bow. Her wild instincts were on full display as she tracked after the other party at a speed far beyond Victor's.

Although Victor was left far behind within minutes of entering the forest, fortunately, after continuing in that direction for a while, he could faintly hear the sharp clang of steel swords colliding ahead.

Well done, Angoulême had caught up with them.