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Translator: Kazumi
Editor: Kabur & Silavin
After dinner, Kousuke was sitting in the back of the wagon, mooching off Nana, when Collete came up to him and told him.
“Kousuke, this might not be good.”
Kousuke immediately jumped up.
Peach, who was in the back of the carriage, looked at Collete with a serious expression on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think Peach’s hunch came true. I think we will need to get involved.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
After nodding once, Collete told them the details of the situation.
Hearing this, Kousuke and Peach turned serious.
“That’s certainly not good enough. This is not the time to talk about preferences, right?”
“I guess so~”
“For now, let’s go.”
Saying that, Kousuke stood up and accompanied the two to the center of the merchant group.
In the tent there, the leaders of this large-scale merchant group should be having a meeting with their respective representatives.
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Carl, the leader of the merchant corps, frowned when he heard Bart, who was in charge of the adventurers, speak.
The other members of the group looked puzzled.
Except for Bart, the only other people present were the merchants who were in charge of managing the merchant convoy’s luggage.
Only Bart and his companion Layla were adventurers.
Therefore, he did not know what to do with Bart’s words.
That was to be expected.
It would have been hard to understand what he meant when he suddenly said, “I have a bad feeling about this,” at their nightly meeting.
If there had been other adventurers in the room, they might have taken his words a little more seriously.
However, Carl was not about to ignore Bart’s words.
In his experience, he had been helped by the “intuition” of adventurers.
“Does that mean there might be another raid?”
Bart frowned at Carl’s cautiousness.
The “dislike” that Bart and Layla were feeling could not be described in words.
“I don’t know. But I feel like there’s something approaching.”
“Hmm…”
Crossing his arms, Carl pondered what to do.
Right now, if he had let a scout check the surroundings and found something, they could immediately defend themselves, and wait for reinforcements to arrive, or deal with the situation if possible.
Again, Carl did not mean to belittle the “intuition” of adventurers.
However, it was also a natural fact for the leader of a trading company to not stop the movement of a caravan based on a mere “Intuition”.
With Carl in distress, Bart also wondered how he could convey what he was feeling.
He was unable to put into words what he was feeling was what he had cultivated and refined as an active adventurer for a long time.
The other merchants around them all had similar expressions on their faces as their leader.
If one had ever peddled, they would have more or less experienced this kind of thing.
And many of them knew from experience that ignoring adventurers at times like this was a bad idea.
The solution to their problems came in the form of the words of someone who interrupted them.
“Excuse me.”
An adventurer who was guarding the tent they were in entered.
“What do you want?”
Carl asked, and the adventurer’s expression turned subtle.
“No, well. There is an adventurer from the escort team here right now, and they asked me to give you this.”
As he said this, he showed what looked like a sealed envelope in his hand.
Carl accepted it, though he wondered what it was.
Opening the sealed envelope and looking inside, Carl’s expression changed at once, and he looked at the adventurer in front of him.
“Wha-, where is the person who handed this to you!”
Those around him who had been watching Carl were surprised at the change.
Of course, the same was true of the adventurer who had given him the sealed letter.
“Huh? Ah, they’re waiting out front.”
“Bring them here at once!”
“Yes, sir!”
The adventurer rushed outside shocked to see the change in Carl’s normally calm disposition.
Bart and the surrounding others tried to ask what was going on, but were unable to do so.
The adventurer who went outside immediately brought Kousuke and the others with him.
“You…?!”
Bart was surprised to see Peach enter with him.
She had reported to him about the two previous raids in advance, so they were already acquainted with each other.
Even if he wanted to forget, he couldn’t.
Carl, who was trying to restrain Bart from asking what was going on, came over to talk to Kousuke and the others.
“Who is Kou?”
“That would be me.”
Carl nodded as Kousuke stepped forward.
Carl nodded. “So you’ve been keeping quiet, and now you’re coming forward, does that mean something has happened?”
The line was based on the assumption that Kousuke would not have contacted him like this if nothing had happened.
Hearing Carl’s words, Kousuke glanced at Bart.
“Quite the situation indeed… Did the adventurer leader tell you something?”
Kousuke asked, guessing why Carl could have predicted it.
“Yeah. He said he had a bad feeling about something.”
Hearing this, Kousuke let out a sigh of admiration.
It was truly amazing what a skilled adventurer could do.
It was not that they could actually see things with the power of Divine Blessing like Peach or with the power of spirits like Collete, but they were able to detect the anomaly this time with the accumulation of years of experience.
Kousuke could only call that as another skill an adventurer could acquire.
“I see. And now you are wondering if you should follow it?”
This was a question that was based on his understanding of the fact that, no matter how much his intuition as an adventurer was whispering to him, they could not decide on what actions the merchant group would do based on that alone.
“Well, I guess, that couldn’t be helped in this case?”
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Those around them, including Bart, watched the conversation between Kousuke and Carl with a slightly stunned expression.
Kousuke and his group were nothing more than a team of adventurers.
Carl, the leader of the merchant team, was talking to Kousuke as if he was talking to a high-ranking person.
Everyone in the room found this strange.
One of the merchants asked Carl out of curiosity.
“Oh, um… Who are they?”
“Mm…?”
Carl wondered what to say.
In fact, the document Carl had seen only contained the names of the two Crown division heads, Schmidt and Gazeran, and a note that said, “The fact that you are looking at this document means that a unique situation has arisen, and you should listen to what Kou-dono has to say”.
Carl did not know what the position of Kousuke and the others was.
Kousuke was simply offering his help to Carl.
“I am Kou, an adventurer. Actually, I was asked by the head of the Gazeran division to audit this convoy.”
This was not a lie.
In fact, when it was decided that Kousuke and the others would accompany this trading party, they were also told to do this by Gazeran.
However, it was not a formal audit, but just a request to let them know if they noticed anything.
Hearing Kousuke’s words, the surprised merchants’ gazes turned to Carl.
“… Well, that’s it. Don’t get me wrong, though? We also left the situation as is.”
He deliberately raised the document as he made his appeal.
Even though they did not see the contents of the written document, it only made things more credible.
In fact, Schmidt’s name was also on it, but Carl had no intention of telling them that much.
This was because it was impossible to determine whether Kousuke was even contracted to audit the other merchants.
“So, what’s this audit thing about?”
Bart asked, somewhat sternly.
No one would be amused to learn that they were being audited.
“Don’t get me wrong. This case is different from an audit. The audit itself was supposed to be done without naming ourselves.”
“Then what?”
“Bart, you need to change your belligerent attitude. Let’s hear what Kou has to say first, shall we?”
Carl intervened, and Bart reluctantly backed down.
