“- Haven’t returned yet,” said one of the scavengers, as he stepped out of the dorm room. His six compassion followed him as he continued speaking. “I’m starting to think something might have happened to them. Otherwise, they should have returned by now. They can’t last that long without a Mark to keep their bodies together.”
“They might have run into a monster. We cleared out all of the ones in this section of the academy, but that doesn’t mean that new ones won’t appear,” said one of the two women in the group. She sounded nervous. “If they don’t return quickly enough, we should probably assume that they fell - and worse, that we have new enemies to deal with once we finish clearing out the dorms.”
I realized that this group was probably talking about the two scavengers we had dealt with. Sure enough, the scavengers we had already dealt with and the enemies in front of us were from the same group - and they had an organized enough command structure to know when members of their group was missing. The scavengers would catch on to our presence quite quickly, if they hadn’t already caught on.
“They should be able to survive a few hours without being in range of the Mark. Calm down. We don’t know for sure that something has happened to them,” said the other girl in the group. She sounded quite a bit more pleasant to the ears - her voice was melodic, in the same way some of the elves from our fourth world had sounded when they were singing. “We should probably go check on them soon, though. If another thirty minutes passes without them showing up, it might be a good idea to head over and see what’s going on. I don’t want to lose anyone else. We already lost three people so far.”
“Coming here with our power level was risky to begin with,” said one of the men in the group. He sounded gruff, and his voice made me think of iron that had been hardened in a forge through repeated hammer strikes. “Even if we can handle the monsters, the laws of reality are simply not friendly towards us. Losing a few people is natural. Besides, the ones that died were all new recruits. Since they’re the weakest of us, it’s natural for them to be more vulnerable to mistakes.”
“If they don’t return, I say we should flee,” said another team member. “The moment the main expedition force returns, we could just run from the Market. We already have a good haul. That splinter is almost certainly a fragment of bark from one of the innermost branches of the Universal Tree. It should fetch a massive amount of money if we sell it to any of the major multiversal powers. There’s no reason to risk our lives for a few new members, especially since those two only joined a month before we set off for the Market.”
“I agree with Merric,” said one of the other members. “We already saw that giant monster eat the billboard. We should get out fast. This nursery is becoming way more dangerous by the hour. I don’t want to get caught up in whatever will happen when that worm finishes evolving. It sucks for those two, but if they took this long to return, they’re probably already dead.”
“We should at least wait until the main group meets up with us. The leader has a Heroic grade shooting skill, so the external laws of reality have way less impact on him than the rest of us. His laser pistol should still be sufficient to handle most threats in this area,” said the strongest member of their group. “When the main expedition returns, as long as the leader is willing, we’ll do one more search. If we can rescue those two, we’ll do what we can. If we can’t, we’ll run out of here before the danger gets worse.”
<Heroic grade shooting? Laser pistol?> asked Sallia. <They really aren’t what I was imagining. I guess they’re more like a space-age pirate group? Space-age guns could be a problem. I have no idea what a space-age weapon is capable of, and I also doubt I can dodge a laser. Especially one backed by a Heroic-Grade shooting skill. I have no idea what shooting skills do, but every heroic-grade skill is a threat to us as we are now.>
I nodded. <The real question is what we should do,> I said. <They mentioned a main expedition, so it sounds like their group broke up to search their surroundings. That also means that even if we deal with this group, we’ll still have a much bigger threat lurking in the shadows. We still don’t know how big the scavenger group is, either. Seven people is not the ‘main’ force, so we can infer the main force is probably larger.>
<Should we just flee into one of the other two branches of the magic academy?> I asked. <If these people aren’t willing to follow up on their two missing members, I don’t have a problem with retreating and waiting for them to pass. We can even set up some kind of item, letting us know when they leave. Then, we can explore this branch of the magic academy after their group exits. We wouldn’t even have any strong monsters to fight, since this group would have cleared them out for us already.>
<It would mean giving up on getting that splinter of tree bark they mentioned earlier, though,> said Felix. <I have a strong suspicion that it must be an amazing crafting material. After this, we only have one world left, and then we’ll have to fight for more lives. We’re running out of time. Furthermore, the first member of their group we found tried to kill us with no warning or discussion, so their group will likely follow suit and open hostilities against us the moment they confirm their existence. If we can somehow take that splinter of wood from them, and I can turn it into an item… we could probably single-handedly solve our problem of not having enough lives.>
I fell into thought. Felix’s words were ruthless - after all, we had only fought with one member of their group so far, and there was a small chance that we could find some sort of reasonable accommodation with the rest of them. They didn’t seem like completely evil thugs - though they were likely willing to do ruthless things as well, I still didn’t know how I felt about attacking another group of people.
It was also true that they had clearly attacked us first, and would likely do so again if they knew we were here.
I sighed.
<All right, if we can find a way to take the splinter of wood, it’s probably a good idea to do so,> I said. <Do you have an actual solution to win the fight, though? I’m not seeing a way to win. They probably have a heroic grade combatant in their main force, and even their weaker forces are at least strong enough to threaten us. They also have numbers on their side. How do we win?>
<One of them mentioned a ‘Mark’ earlier, and based on the context, I suspect that this Mark is what lets them survive in a dimension with laws inherently hostile to them. What if we steal the mark that lets them survive in the dimensional laws of the Market?> asked Sallia.
I froze, and then looked at Sallia in thought. She grinned at me.
<If we can play hide and seek for a while after taking the Mark, the laws of reality here in the Market should rip them apart. It would be like stealing someone's breathing suit while they’re diving into the ocean - all we have to do is remove their equipment and then wait. If we can do the same for the main force, everyone except for their heroic-grade shooter will also die. Then, we can ambush him - or find a way to lure monsters to his location and get a better idea what his abilities are like. I’m not saying it’s a perfect plan, but I think it could work.>
I hesitated, and looked at my other friends. After they nodded in agreement, I grudgingly nodded as well. Our plan was set.
We wouldn’t shrink away from this group - we would take the scavengers down, in hopes of changing our hopeless fate and surviving the collapse of the Market.