As I stood there contemplating, a quiet voice spoke from the shadows beside me.
"You must be the one Kerina was talking about."
I turned, startled. I hadn't heard anyone approach. Leaning against the wall was a small girl with short, neat black hair. Her clothes were bizarrely out of place for the mild festival night. She was wearing a thick, high-collared white coat, heavy trousers, and sealed boots, as if she were dressed for an expedition to a frozen, hazardous wasteland.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice cautious.
"Miyamoto Riko. Adventurer's Guild, A-minus Rank." She looked me up and down. "I heard about you. The new man with the duplication power."
A-minus Rank… Another top-tier adventurer. And Kerina has already been talking about me. Was it today or before?
I gave a slight, formal nod, deciding to stick to the official story. "Hayato Mikami, and yes my ability is Duplication."
Riko stared at me for a moment with her unblinking, analytical gaze, then looked towards the roaring bonfire and the crowds of people gathered around long tables laden with food.
"Then why are you standing back here in the shadows? the Grand Feast is about to begin. You should come get something to eat."
Riko didn't wait for my reply. She simply turned and began walking out of the shadows towards the warmth and light of the bonfire.
"Come on," she said over her shoulder, her voice still flat but with an undeniable undertone of command. "Standing in the dark is inefficient. If you want to learn things, you need to talk to people. I'll introduce you."
She's right…Hiding is safe, but it yields no data. Time to engage.
I took a breath and followed her out of the darkness and into the roar of the festival.
She navigated the boisterous crowd with an ease that I lacked, moving towards a group of adventurers gathered around a large wooden table, laughing loudly. There was a brawny dwarf, a lithe-looking elf, and a couple of humans in battered leather armor.
"Riko! Didn't figure you would come!" the dwarf boomed as we approached.
Riko ignored the comment and gestured with her head towards me. I was standing awkwardly at her side. "This is Hayato. He's new. Kerina is sponsoring him."
The adventurers' laughing faces immediately turned towards me, their expressions shifting to ones of intense, undisguised curiosity.
The adventurers at the table all stared at me, their curiosity now openly displayed. It was the lithe, sharp-eyed elf who spoke first, a look of dawning recognition on her face as she pointed a slender finger at me.
"Wait a second... aren't you the one who was fighting with Reyn in the middle of the city that time?"
All eyes at the table widened. The dwarf let out a low whistle.
I gave a simple, non-committal nod. "Yes. It was a misunderstanding. He seemed to think I was some 'Unseen Thief,' a person I've never even heard of."
I turned my gaze to the elf. "How did you know about that?"
She took a casual sip of her drink, she starts with a shrug. "I saw it start, it's not every day you see someone just appear out of thin air. I followed you two into that alleyway. I left after he had you cornered at the dead end, though. Figured the fight was over and didn't want to be around for the guards."
The elf's story left a tense, questioning silence hanging over the table. Everyone stared at me, their minds clearly trying to bridge the gap.
The silence was shattered by the brawny dwarf, who slammed his heavy mug down on the table with a loud thud.
"Bah! Enough with the stories and the interrogations! The man's here now, and tonight's a festival!" he boomed, his voice a hearty growl.
He gestured with a wide, welcoming sweep of his arm to the empty spaces on the bench. "Sit, the both of you! Take a seat and grab a drink. Ignore all of that for now. Tonight is for eating, not for Guild politics!"
We found a space on the crowded bench. The dwarf pushed a heavy wooden mug of ale into my hands and the group's boisterous conversation started to swell again. One of the human adventurers turned to Riko.
"So, that northern expedition you were on, How'd it go?" he asked.
Riko's flat expression seemed to darken. "Worse than we'd hoped," she said simply.
She then unfastened the clasps on her heavy white coat. In the heat of the massive bonfire, she finally shrugged it off, draping it beside her.
Everyone at the table fell silent. Beneath the coat, the skin of her arms and neck was a shocking sight. A jagged, crystalline lattice of pale blue ice seemed to be growing directly out of her flesh, crisscrossed with the faint, white lines of old scars.
"Gods... Riko, what are those icy things?" the dwarf whispered.
The elf leaned in, her eyes wide with a different kind of concern. "Is that your Cryo-Shell? A new defensive power?"
Riko looked down at her own arm with a detached, clinical gaze. "No, It's a curse. A parting gift from the Ice King. It's a disease. It's slowly freezing my blood. Eventually, it will kill me."
She flexed her fingers, the ice on her arm cracking faintly. "I'm lucky. My own ice affinity and resistance makes it easier to manage. I can slow it down. But the frost that's already taken hold... that's permanent."
The grim reality of Riko's curse settled over the table. So that's the reason for her clothes, I thought, piecing it all together.
They're not just for warmth; they're functional, probably insulated to help her manage the internal cold. She has an ice affinity, so the Guild sent her on an expedition north to fight an 'Ice King'. The mission must have gone wrong, and he cursed her in retaliation.
I broke the somber silence. "You said 'we' were sent. You weren't alone on that expedition, then."
Riko shook her head, her gaze distant. "No. I was there as support. The mission was led by the Hero Party."
'Hero', I thought, the word immediately flagging in my mind. Kerina used that same word. First, she called me a 'Summoned Hero' when I told her my story. Then, she made it clear that 'Heroes' were a different class from adventurers entirely. So what does the title actually mean? Is it a term reserved for people from another world, like me? Or is it just a designation for the strongest warriors born here, officially recognized by the kingdom?
The elf leaned forward, her voice a hushed, respectful whisper. "The Hero Party... so, where are they now? Did they succeed in defeating the Ice King?"
Riko's flat expression crumbled, replaced by a look of deep, painful confusion. She looked down at the crystalline frost creeping up her own arm. "I... I don't understand what happened. Somehow... the Hero chose to side with the Ice King."
A stunned silence fell over the table, immediately shattered by the dwarf's fist slamming down.
"Sided with him?!" he roared, his voice full of disbelief and outrage. "How could that be! That monster has been spreading his cursed frost across the entire Northern Reach for months! He's changing the very ecosystem, turning good forests into frozen wastelands! What could the Hero possibly be thinking, joining a creature like that?!"
Riko just shook her head, her gaze dark and distant. "I don't know. I don't know his reasons."
She looked up, meeting the shocked faces around the table. "All I know is that I had to run from there. I barely escaped with my life, because the Hero Party and their leader, Arthur tried to kill me."
The grim revelation hung over the table, a cold weight heavier than any winter. The other adventurers were speechless, lost in the horror of Riko's story. But the elf's expression shifted from shock to intense concentration.
She stood up abruptly and walked around the table to stand in front of Riko. "Don't move. The curse... something you said... it reminded me of a passage in an old text. Stay still. I'm going to try something."
As she spoke, a thick, ancient-looking tome bound in silver filigree materialized out of thin air, floating before her. A cascade of shimmering, ethereal pages swirled around the elf as the book flipped open on its own, its pages turning with a soft, rustling sound until it stopped on a single, chapter.
The elf placed her hands just above the crystalline frost on Riko's arm, her eyes glowing with a soft, light as she began to chant in a low, melodic language that was not of the common tongue. The floating pages around her pulsed in time with her words.
To Be Continued.