Spring Comes
“Karios, your collar is crooked.”
“O-oh. Thanks. I think I’ll be back late tonight. Don’t cry because you’re lonely.”
“I won’t. I’ll make your favorite stew with plenty of eggs and wait for you. Please make doubly sure you’re not injured.”
“It hurts me so much to leave you that it feels like my body is being torn to shreds… But I have a job to do. I’m sorry.”
“No, I don’t want to part with you, either. But it would pain me if I got in the way of your work. I will fight back the tears, and…”
Could you two please give it a rest already?! Day in, day out, the two of you flirt in front of a vending machine like the love-drunk couple that you are.
Look! Even Gorth is face-palming. He’s clearly exhausted. They’re on duty together a lot, so he must have to hear these stories day in and day out. I pity him.
“Munami, the weather is fine today again. The sunlight has been warming up recently—it’s the perfect weather to go for a walk.”
“You’re right. Will your store be okay without you today?”
The other annoying crew is here. It’s the young merchant and the self-titled poster girl of the inn, Munami. They haven’t started going out yet, but Munami seems to be talking to him as a friend rather than as a customer, so they’re on much better terms than they were before.
And for some reason, every last one of them starts having a conversation in front of me. Sigh. Just when I felt the temperature rising and spring coming on, a bunch of people at the height of their own springs are gathering.
But there’s no time to idly bask in the seasons changing, because soon the hunters will start going back to work. That includes Lammis and also reminds me of my promise to the Menagerie of Fools to participate in their expedition…
“Boxxo, how are you doing?”
“Heh, looks like you’re selling well as always. It’s nice and warm out today, so I’ll take a cold fizzling drink.”
Speak of the devil, or what have you. Lammis and Hulemy are here.
The couples seem to have left at some point. I’m happy they’re friendly, but I really wish they’d do their thing somewhere else. I don’t have a physical body, so matters of love have nothing to do with me.
But it’s not like I’m j-jealous or anything. Next time I see them, I’ll even give them warmed carbonated drinks to celebrate.
“Boxxo, we’re set to leave tomorrow,” says Lammis. “Are you still okay with this?”
“Welcome.” I’ve known about it for a long time in advance. I don’t have a reason to refuse at this point.
I’m racked with worry, but I do hope that she gets stronger. The two of us are like two halves of a whole. All we can do is make up for what the other lacks.
Well, I’m talking pretty big, but I’m the one who lacks a whole lot more in comparison to her. I don’t have arms or legs, after all. She’s always the one helping me.
“Oh, right, it was tomorrow, wasn’t it? That whole thing about you going with the Menagerie of Fools on a job?”
“That’s right, Hulemy. I think they said we’re going to, um, scope out the crocodile fiends.”
“The crocodile fiends—one of the Three Factions dwelling in the Clearflow Lake stratum…”
Like Hulemy says, the monsters dwelling in this stratum can be broadly categorized into three groups. The frog people—or frog fiends. The double serpents, one of which attacked the settlement. And the bipedal lizardmen—no, crocodile people, the crocodile fiends.
The stratum seems to be home to frogs, snakes, and crocodiles. After the frogs and snakes showed up, I remembered an old children’s game and assumed the third would be slugs, but it turned out to be crocodiles.
When you think about it, this is a marshy region, so maybe slugs would be out of place.
“We’re investigating if the crocodile fiends’ numbers have grown now that we beat the frog fiends and the double serpent. Putting them down is secondary—he said we were going to see how much of a threat they might be.”
Two of the three major threats have taken serious damage, so if we investigate the crocodiles’ habitat and they’ve gotten too populous, they plan to put together a hunting team.
Strata have their own ecosystems, and it’s normal that something odd will happen if you blindly ruin it. The tragedy three years ago was apparently due to the monster factions’ equilibrium getting messed up.
“It’s true—you’ll have to investigate while you have the chance, or it could spell trouble later. We’re talking about a king frog fiend and a giant double serpent appearing. Something strange might be happening in this stratum… Lammis, if things get bad, get out of there.”
“Yup. If it gets dangerous, I’ll take Boxxo and run away. Right?”
“Welcome.” I’ll remember to be on my guard all throughout the expedition so I can use my Force Field at any time.
Normally, one would need all sorts of preparations, but I don’t have anything to do, really. About all I can do is stock some new products and set myself up to provide items depending on the situation. Oh, I should give the stores some ingredients before going.
Also, I’ll have to sell my drinks cheap at Munami’s temporary inn. I’ll be away from the settlement for a while, so if I can provide my regulars with enough to tide them over, I’ll be all set.
The entire settlement seems to know we’re going on this expedition with the Menagerie of Fools, so people continued to come to me until late at night to stock up.
The next morning, Lammis and Hulemy eat their breakfast next to me.
Lammis has on leather armor and sturdy-looking boots for the expedition, but several small bags also hang from her waist. She also has the wooden rack for carrying me.
I’m here for her food, so that isn’t a problem, and I can light up as well. It seems like my Heat-Retention feature works on anyone nearby, so I can dampen both the cold and the warm for her while she sleeps. And if it comes to it, I can just give her a bath towel.
Which means I guess she doesn’t need to bring much. She’ll be lugging me along too, after all, so she can’t exactly bring anything large. The Menagerie of Fools will apparently be providing the bare minimum in terms of items, so I suppose I don’t need to worry about much.
“Yo, Lammis, Boxxo. You guys all ready?”
Following that greeting appears Captain Kerioyl, the shady-looking man with some newly acquired length to his stubble, his trademark ten-gallon hat sitting askew on his head. Next to him is the blue-haired vice captain, Filmina, as well.
“Good morning, everyone. If there are no issues, the buar cart is waiting at the gate.”
“We’re all ready. Boxxo, let’s go. Hup, ho!”
She hoists me onto her back as easily as ever, then follows behind the captain and the vice captain. We’ve been inside the settlement all winter, so it’ll be nice to go outside. Lately, I’ve been feeling less like I’m in an alternate world and more like a set for a fantasy movie.
Few people arm themselves in the winter; most wear plain clothing, which sometimes causes me to forget that I’m in a fantasy world. Of course, Director Bear and others with animal features appeared every once in a while, bringing me back to reality.
In this world, the animal people aren’t the fantastical sort—humans with cat ears and tails and such—but actual animals. The frog people are the same. It seems that, in general, it’s like they took animals and rearranged their skeletons to be more human-esque.
“Living confined inside the walls starts to make you stir-crazy, doesn’t it? You have to go outside and get a breath of fresh air every once in a while, or you’ll start to rot.”
“Welcome,” I reply, only now noticing that Hulemy is walking alongside us. Is she coming to see us off?
“That over there is the Menagerie’s buar cart,” says Filmina, pointing to a single giant buar with a cart behind it. It’s stopped a little farther out than the gate. Karios and Gorth are nearby, having a chat with hunters who seem to be members of the Menagerie.
“Oh, Lammis, Boxxo. Be careful out there, okay? Ah, wait a minute. I want to stock up on a few things.”
“I’ll buy some things, too.”
I won’t be seeing them again for a while, after all. I recommend you stock up.
They proceed to buy a large amount, and I mess with the slot’s jackpot chances a bit and give one to Gorth, but not Karios. Certainly not out of a bias against the in-your-face I’m-further-along-in-life-than-you stuff recently.
“Oh, the captain brought them. Lammis, Boxxo, pleased to meet you.”
“Yeah. Welcome, both of you—person and machine both.”
“Nice to meetcha!”
This group is like a big family, and while there does seem to be a rank system, most of them seem generally familiar with one another. The members of our expeditionary force include the captain, the vice captain, the archer girl who was there during the frog-fiend hunt, and two young men who look like twins and seem good-natured.
“Great, let’s head out. Hurry up and get her ready!” Captain Kerioyl gives a kick to the cart wheel to rush the twins, reclining in the covered wagon. They move around to the coachman seats as the captain and vice captain climb aboard. “Lammis and Boxxo, you can get in, too.”
“No, I’ll run for now! It’ll be good for my training. And I think if I put Boxxo in there, it’ll be hard for the buar.”
Well, we do have the weight of quite a few people. I might be a bigger burden than if everyone was on there at once.
“Great, then I’ll get in instead,” says Hulemy, who I thought had come to see us off, boarding the cart. Wait, what?!
“Huh? Hulemy, you’re coming, too?”
“That’s right. You’re doing biological research on monsters—you’ll want someone with a lot of knowledge on them. I got the request from Director Bear himself.”
She was keeping quiet just to surprise us, wasn’t she? Come to think of it, she never did seem very worried about us.
They may call themselves the Menagerie of Fools, but their skills are the real deal. They can be her bodyguard, so I think even Hulemy, with no combat abilities, should be fine, but there’s no telling what could happen in an alternate world where monsters exist. I can protect her if I’m nearby, but I’ll be mainly moving with Lammis, so she’ll probably end up hiding in the cart.
An adventure… I was reborn into this world as a vending machine and would normally have just lived out my life as a metal box that simply sold things. I didn’t think I’d be wandering the dungeon like this.
You never know what will happen in life—whether you’re a person or a vending machine.
As I bump around on Lammis’s back as she runs alongside the buar cart, matching its speed, I gaze with deep emotion at the settlement as it shrinks into the distance.
