There are those working so they can send money home, while others labor to repay the debt for some crime they committed. Others save their money, harboring a foolish dream of becoming adventurers; others still are earning something to support them on the road.

Not that anyone cares a whit about where these people come from or why. The only question is whether they do a good day’s work, and they all know it. Be you a criminal or the third son of a noble, in the hole, it doesn’t matter, as long as you can dig.

“Right, boys, how about we call it a day?”

“You said it!”

They dig from dawn till dusk, not that one can tell time down below. A great bell booms out from above; that’s how they know it’s the end of the workday.

There’s a general hubbub as everyone works their way out of the mine, tools laid across shoulders.

“Hrm?” one miner mutters, his pickax dug into the face of the wall.

“Somethin’ the matter?”

“Wait up. It’s stuck on something…”

He pulls as hard as he can. When he frees the ax, however, the end is missing.

In its place is a viscous black ooze, one thread of it still hanging down to the earth.

The miner looks at it vacantly. An instant later, the black goop explodes.

It covers the miner from head to toe; he struggles but can say nothing as it suffocates him.

“Ngah! Wh-what the—!”

“What happened? What’s going on?!”

The shouting attracts other miners who had almost been out of the pit.

Maybe it would have been better if they had kept going and not turned around. Although who knows if that would have been the wiser choice?

The first thing they notice as they get back into the mine is the stomach-turning stench of burning flesh. The black liquid is eating through the covered miner, steaming as it goes. The unfortunate victim literally melts away before their eyes, until he’s nothing more than a gleaming skeleton.

“This… This might be a man-eating Blob! I’ve heard about them!”

“Run! It’s dangerous!”

Some of the men cling to their pickaxes, the source of their livelihoods, as they flee; others simply cast them aside.

The black goop keeps bubbling up out of the ground, crawling after them.

How many will it claim before they reach the surface…?

The dice of Fate and Chance are utterly without mercy.

She could still remember clearly why they had fought.

They must have been about eight years old.

She had been invited to come help with the cows on her uncle’s farm, as the animals were about to give birth. Looking back now, she knew that it was just an excuse to give his niece a chance to enjoy herself, but at the time, she had been totally unaware of that.

She would go to town, get a job, and get to ride in a carriage all by herself. She was overflowing with joy and excitement. She felt like she had suddenly become a real grown-up. Now she knew how foolish that was.

She remembered bragging to him: “Pretty cool, huh! You’ve never even been to town, have you?”

The boy lived next door to her and was two years older than her. Maybe that was why her condescending tone rankled him so much.

It was why she couldn’t bring herself to simply say, “Want to come with me?” She wanted him to be the one to say he wanted to go so that she could puff out her chest proudly and say, “Sure!”

But he just stood there with his fists clenched, staring at the ground.

The proximate cause of what she said next was very small. He shouted something, then she shouted something back, and the two of them got worked up over it. The fight ended with both of them weeping copiously.

She never was able to make herself apologize to him. The argument went on until his older sister picked him up.

When she got into the carriage the next day, only her parents were there to see her off.

It meant the last thing she had ever seen of him was his back as his sister led him to their house, his hand in hers.

She never saw him again.

It had been five years already.

*

“Er-errgh…”

A rooster crowed in the distance. The morning sun’s rays pierced her eyelids mercilessly.

She could hear someone working in the fields; her uncle must already be about his tasks for the day. She stretched out on her straw bed, but she was only delaying the inevitable. At length, she surrendered, crawling out from under the sheets, exposing her naked body to the bracing air.

“Sooo sleepy…”

She hardly felt as if she had slept at all. She arched her back, causing her well-developed body to jiggle. Her chest and her bottom stood out as especially round, almost embarrassingly so. She wondered why she was so much more developed than other girls her age (though admittedly, she knew few of them). Maybe she had just hit her growth spurt.

Her generous figure, however, didn’t make her at all happy. She left her long hair to fall over her face as she stuffed herself into her underwear and then her clothing.

She glanced at the window and thought of opening it but stopped. She just didn’t feel like it.

When she got to the dining area, she saw a pile of rye bread in a basket on the table. There was a thin, cold soup waiting in the soup pot.

She took a piece of bread, dipped it in the soup, and munched on it, offering up a small prayer of thanks to the gods for her food.

Only after all this did she come outside, where she looked around and quickly spotted her uncle.

“Good morning, Uncle.”

“Ah, g’morning!” A smile split her uncle’s craggy, sunbaked face, and he stopped working long enough to greet her. He didn’t reprimand her for oversleeping. She bit her lip gently.

“Say,” her uncle said. He trailed off before coming up with, “When I’m finished here, I’ve got some deliveries to make—”

Without waiting for him to finish his sentence—do you want to come?—she shook her head and said, “No, thanks.” She somehow managed a smile and added, “I don’t need to go to…to town.”

“I see,” he murmured, grimacing. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Sorry to trouble you,” her uncle said, “but could you let the cows out? We need them to eat well and fatten up.”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod, “sure thing.”

She went to the barn with her back hunched and her eyes down to let the animals out. She shook the stick in her hand, calling, “Here, cows! Come on!”

The spring sunlight was pleasantly warm, a breeze running through the daisies that bloomed on the hilltop.

Despite the lovely moment, her heart felt heavy and gray.

What an awful dream.

It was already five years ago. Or was it just five years ago?

Five years since the farm on the outskirts of town had taken her in. And yet, look at her.

I’m not a very good girl…

Maybe they shouldn’t have anything to do with each other anymore. They only brought each other grief. It would be best if she could get him to just leave her alone, but she couldn’t abide the thought of letting him raise her without doing anything in return. For that matter, she wouldn’t be able to do anything on her own. She let out a deep sigh.

She realized the cows had wandered to the border of the farm while she was lost in these thoughts.

The road to town ran by on the other side of their fence, and some of the passersby traveling on it glanced at her.

“…”

She found herself oddly discomfited; she blushed and tried to shrink into herself.

“Here, cows!” she called, trying to ignore the looks others gave her, but her shout came out almost in a whisper.

It’s not like I’m doing anything unusual…

She finally managed to calm down a bit, but the confusion of the world carried on.

The migration of those who had been displaced or starved out by the battle with the Dark Gods five years earlier continued even now. Sometimes, it involved boys and girls not so different in age from her. In place of rucksacks, they carried whatever kind of bag they had on hand; some of them wore swords they seemed to have picked up along the way. All of them frowned and hurried along the road with a certain anxiousness.

They’re going to go be adventurers.

She knew it at a glance. In her memory, he had looked the same way.

Adventurers. A word to make the heart flutter. Those people explored unknown ruins, fought monsters, found treasure, saved princesses, and sometimes even played a part in the fate of the world.

She had heard that it was a party of adventurers who had been responsible for saving the world five years before.

Many dreamed of becoming adventurers when they were recognized as adults at fifteen years old—or whenever they could pass for old enough. Some of them, of course, had lost homes, couldn’t learn a trade, or were otherwise left with no other choice. That didn’t take the sheen off the idea of an adventurer, though, and she knew that better than anyone.

Besides, who knew? If things had been just a little bit different, it might have been her on that road. Or she might simply have been gone.

Like him.

“Ergh…”

The thought caused a chill to spread from her stomach through the rest of her body.

Shut it out. Forget everything except for what you have to do right now.

The cows. Call Here cows, here cows, and then get off this road, quickly. She’d had enough of it.

She looked up to take a count and make sure all the cattle were there.

“Huh…?” She blinked.

It was at that moment that she thought she had seen, mingled in the crowd, a familiar back…