"There." Glenn plopped the giant stack of papers on his desk before patting them a few times, "You owe me big time for this, Adam. And don't ever ask me to do such ginormous tasks on such short notice again!"
"Haha, apologies." Adam shoved the stack of papers haphazardly into our luggage, each crease and fold making one more of Glenn's veins pop out, "You're the best, Glenn, I can always count on you!"
"Hmph, heh..." Glenn tried to not let his smile show on his face, but everyone could tell just how a little praise can get him to do your every bidding, "Well, just make sure to tell me in advance when you need anything else in the future, y'hear?"
"Of course." Adam then turned around to leave the office, and immediately upon closing the door, he revealed flat out, "I have no intentions of ever speaking to that man apart from the yearly summit ever again."
"But damn, I knew the list would be long, but an entire stack you can barely fit into the suitcase?" Issei asked, "Are we really gonna have to visit all of those places? Do we even know who we're looking for exactly?"
Hearing this, all of us instinctively turned to Bamb for an answer to that question. In truth, she never really did give us a description of this mystery character, like a poorly written book would do. We've got nothing to go off of except that he is of the male gender and is kind to animals. That's still a super vague explanation though, so we're gonna need some more details.
"What's does his hair look like?" Aru asked.
"Super cute!" Bamb smiled back.
"What name does he go by?" Adam inquired.
"A really cool one!" She replied.
"What clothes does he usually wear?" I figured she couldn't get this one wrong.
"Stylish ones!" Bamb once again didn't prove herself useful on this search.
"Bamb, we can't find this kid if you're not more specific." I sighed, "We need something more concrete."
"Speaking of, what age is he roughly?" Issei thought to ask a good question, "I mean, Bamb remembers him as a boy, but maybe he's aged since they've last seen each other."
"Good point." Adam then turned to her, "So Bamb, is he around our age or is he younger?"
"He's at that adorable age." She once again replied with an odd answer, "So pure, yet so kind... Ohhh, it just makes me want to snuggle up to him!"
"Dammit, we're not getting anywhere at this rate." I then looked to Aru for answers, "Aru, can't you just look into this guy? Apart from the shadow people, you can look into everyone else, right?"
"Yeah, sure." She shrugged.
"Damn, then I guess..." I did a double-take, "Wait, what did you say?"
"Yeah, I can look into him for you, no problem." She repeated, "I'm surprised it took you this long to ask me. I wanted to remind you of my omniscience a while ago, actually, but at some point it got fun waiting for you guys to finally realize."
This damned Goddess...! W-Well, this is nevertheless good, then. We have nothing to worry about, and can actually send Bamb back to her owner immediately once we find out who he is. Judging by the fact that we found her in the forest near Sabljevo, we're probably not too far away from him anyways, right?
"The man's name is Navi Lovac." Aru looked northwards, "He's an older teenager with a black haired undercut hairstyle. He's a Green Iro who never once converted since birth, and is still living with his parents, helping them run their family business - the slaughter house."
"Slaughter house!?" We all gasped in unison, safe from Bamb, "Wait, we didn't expect the guy to be working in a slaughter house."
"You sure you got the right guy?" Issei asked, "Bamb said this guy loves animals more than anything, so..."
"I'm afraid I did in fact get the right guy. Sheesh, don't doubt me so easily, foreigner." Aru scoffed, "From what I gathered, he always had a certain affinity towards the animals, always befriending the ones his parents would bring in for their job."
"But if they're bringing them in for their job, then...?" I winced.
"Yeah, he always had to say goodbye to his new friends in the worst way possible." She looked down, "But that didn't stop him. As his Iro dictates, his dream is to open an animal sanctuary where they can all roam freely without worrying about a single thing. He could have left his parents' job a long time ago to pursue that dream, but he wasn't willing to run away from all of the animals that were to be slaughtered."
"Slaughter..." Bamb turned to me, "I've heard the word before, but what does it mean exactly?"
"A-Ah, that's..." I turned away, "You don't need to know for now..."
"It means to kill." Aru heartlessly explained, "To cull, to cut up and to prepare for other humans to eat. That is what a slaughter house is for."
"Eep!" Bamb was in disbelief, "B-But! He never killed anyone! It's a lie, I tell you! A lie!"
"Calm down, ya' damned grass-chewing beautiful beast." Aru rolled her Eyes before she gave everyone the full picture, "He didn't kill a single animal, his parents did. He's still stuck with them in that damned loud house of theirs, and he promised not to ever leave until he makes his parents stop with the slaughtering."
"What a noble goal." Adam thought to look at it from both sides, "But what of his parents' financial status? Surely they have no other choice if that is their family business?"
"Wrong, his family's rich as hell to the point where they can retire whenever they want and splurge for the next three generations." Aru closed it off on a grim note, "Navi is 100% in the right here. They can stop whenever they want to, they just don't want to end the tradition."
"That's horrible!" Bamb growled, "Those humans...! They're monsters! Even more than the beasts!"
"To harm others purely to continue fanning the flames of tradition..." I spit on the ground in disgust, "Humans, when will you learn?!"
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"Well, we've learned a lot thus far, but where is this sla-err, family business of his located?" I tried dodging the S-word around Bamb.
"That's another issue." Aru sighed before pointing to her left, "It's way up north in Montes."
"Montes, eh?" Issei chuckled as we finally walked out of the city gates, "That's not at all on the way to where we're headed."
"I can send someone to check on the situation." Adam suggested before vetoing his own suggestion, "But I'd rather we go there ourselves, not only for Bamb's sake, but for this Navi boy's sake as well. If he needs any help, why not give him the best there is?"
"Right, having a king come up to your doorstep and talk some sense into your parents would surely do the trick." I then clicked my tongue, "Damn, if only that'd work for my folks as well, but they already know you personally."
"Haha, your parents are wonderful, Edward!" Adam patted me on the back before whistling for a nearby transport wagon, "Just sit down with them and tell them your wants and needs properly. Believe it or not, your parents DO in fact just want what's best for you, they just don't have anything to go off of, so their guesses may be a tad off."
"I suppose so." I shrugged, "Well then, where will we be going? Over to Montes?"
"I think we can afford to delegate the investigation of the other two cities to my knights and officers situated near there." Adam nodded as we got in one by one, "For now, let's go back to Centralis and rendezvous with our families. Sharing with them what we've learned so far might help us get a new lead on this mystery chase, and it serves as a good resting point. After that's done, we'll go to Montes to return Bamb to Navi."
"Great!" I sat down, "Then, while we wait, you guys wanna take guesses on where we think the next attack is gonna be?"
"Damn, way to dampen the mood." Aru smirked, "Usually this is the point where you say something super open-ended and optimistic to close the curtains on the event, but you're just gonna heartlessly continue it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, but yeah sure, let's go with that." I gave her a disgruntled face, "I'm just saying, we might be able to predict where the next attack is based on the info we got so far."
"So for now, we know they tend to attack tourist cities, they snowball and make the attacks more devastating the more they go, and they tend to attack cities where the people are easily offended." Issei counted on his fingers, "In short - we gained barely anything from this little venture."
"Don't say that." Adam turned to him, "We got the opportunity to help Bamb! Besides, we've learned that not all animals participated in the attacks, and we know for a fact that the lanky man is looking for another mystery shadow man that's purposefully wandering around Cardina on foot."
"Again, you always make the most of a dire situation." I chuckled, "You know, I just thought of something... What if the shadow person is coming to Montes as well?"
"What makes you say that?" Aru raised an eyebrow, "It's literally on the other side of where we are, why would he go around the south just to cut through diagonally?"
"I see...!" Adam figured it out on his own, "It's because there's a main highway that perfectly connects with Hronik, the fourth city we were supposed to go to! The chances are small, but it could very well be the case!"
"Pshh, for such a coincidence to happen, it'd definitely have to be fate." Issei thought, "Though, in an isekai, I guess such a thing isn't completely out of the question."
"Ise...kai?" A question mark formed above Bamb's head.
"Yeah, we don't know either, Bamb." I patted her on the head.
"What, did she ask what it means?" Issei guessed as much, "In my language, that means a parallel world. It's often a trope in fantasy stories to have the main character be teleported from their own world to an isekai."
"So what, you're calling yourself the main character?" I chuckled, "What a world we live in..."
"Oi! I'll have you know I'm doing pretty well for someone trapped here for 12 years!" Issei got a bit loud in a joking kind of way.
"Trapped? Is our world seriously so much worse than yours for you to be trapped in it?" Adam tilted his head.
"Well, yes and no." Issei explained both the pros and cons, "Does it beat sitting around all day back home, studying and playing games? Yeah. Does it have animal girls who love you with all their might? No. Is it cool to live in a world where people's Eye color gives them awesome powers, and where you get to travel around with a literal God? Hell yeah! But is it cool that I don't have access to those powers? Not at all."
"So overall, a pretty balanced experience." Adam reclined, "Such is life. It has ups and downs, no matter what world we live in."
"Hmm, I guess so." Issei agreed with him before glancing over to a drowsy Bamb, "Still, I wonder if the animals in my world speak Latin. I've certainly never tried it, so it might hold true for them as well."
"Please don't go terrorizing the animals of your world when you get home." I begged him, "Imagine if the roles were reversed - some random animal walks up to you and starts speaking a foreign language."
"That'd be cool as hell!" He rebuked.
"Yeah, bad analogy..." I shriveled up in my seat, "That would indeed be pretty interesting."
"Just what the hell kind of random bullshit have you guys been talking about?" Aru clicked her tongue at us, finally putting an end to our meaningless conversation, "I could've slept through all this, but you actually made me wait for some interesting topics to show up. Geez, what the hell..."
What's so wrong about engaging in meaningless topics? I-I mean, this isn't meaningless, we got to learn a lot about Issei's isekai! Wait, Issei Kaido... Isekai...do?
"What the hell!" I shouted upon realizing, scaring everyone in the carriage awake and even startling the driver a bit, "Ah, whoops."