“I stabbed him with a spear I made from a carved tree branch. I stabbed the goblin in the stomach and killed him when he fell. Then I took his weapon.”
“Are you from a native tribe or…”
The haggard man who had been listening silently looked at me with an exasperated expression. Well, what else was I supposed to do! I was completely unarmed!
“Really, what kind of black rabbit…”
“Black rabbit?”
“Your hair. It’s black, isn’t it? And you’re a cowardly rabbit. It fits perfectly! Black Rabbit!”
Hey, they were cute little critters, but he clearly meant to insult me! Are you kidding me!
As we talked like this for a while, the pack of forest wolves was annihilated. Apparently, they really weren’t anything to be worried about. The standards must be pretty high in this world. Or was it just me that was very weak?
“Ah, it’s been a while since we fought a whole pack. That was very, very tiring.”
“Thank you, and I’m sorry for the trouble.”
I bowed to the old gatekeeper who had returned. I had really been saved. I would have been dead if these people hadn’t come. My throat would have been torn out and they would have dragged my body back into the forest…
“Bah, it’s nothing. It’s not every day that you’re attacked by an entire pack. It must have been quite the shock for you. Ah, Gardo and the others were a good help too.”
“Gardo?”
“No, we were just bored. Nevermind us.”
The haggard-looking man answered. So that guy was Gardo.
“Let’s go, Ness.”
“Fine. See you around, Black Rabbit.”
The gangly man named Ness, grinned at me as he walked away. The two of them were quite an odd pair… I’m sure I would be seeing them again. I hoped they would at least stop calling me Black Rabbit.
“You, you’re covered in dirt, I see. Are you hurt?”
“Umm, this was just to disguise my scent. I’m not injured.”
With that, I received several looks of ‘is this guy serious?’
“Ah, well, that is fine then. There’s a guardhouse over there with a well in the back. Why don’t you go and wash up? You don’t seem to have any belongings with you, much less any clothes. I’ll have some spares prepared for you.”
What a kind man… I accepted the offer and headed towards the well and wiped my body down with a borrowed towel and changed into a linen shirt. Hmm, it was very comfortable. The old clothes went a bag I had also borrowed. I was borrowing a lot… Hopefully, they didn’t mind too much.
“Now, you must have calmed down a little. My name’s Russell. And you are?”
The gatekeeper’s name was Russell. There seemed to be a lot of foreign sounding names here. I thought as I memorized the name of my rescuer, before introducing myself as well.
“I’m Kamishiro Asagi… Uh, I mean Asagi Kamishiro. Thank you for helping me.”
I switched the way of saying my name to sound more foreign.
“Asagi, huh. Don’t worry about it. Let’s start again. Welcome to Fhiraldo!”
Well, leaving that aside, it had been 6 days since I started wandering this new world. And at long last, I had arrived at my first town, ‘Fhiraldo.’