I decided to postpone testing my newly acquired skills for a bit and, together with Ravi, gathered our sacks and exited the dungeon.
As soon as we stepped outside, it felt like the halted flow of time resumed, and the scenery, which had seemed frozen, started moving again.
Only then did Ravi let out a sigh of relief.
“Haa… That was close. When that weird black thing jumped out earlier, I seriously thought we were done for.”
“A crisis is just another opportunity. Thanks to that, we got a bunch of high-quality gear.”
“Are you really sure you don’t want to take these? They obviously look expensive…”
“I told you, I have no place to store them anyway. Besides, I don’t have anything urgent to do right now, and we’re not strangers, so I might as well help you out and take a look around the Carrot Principality. You don’t have any major objections if I come along, right?”
Ravi twitched her rabbit ears and nodded, though her expression was still filled with concern.
“Um, Alvis. The Carrot Principality is over 99% populated by Bunnyfolk.”
“Huh? Well, yeah, that makes sense. It’s a Bunnyfolk country. What are you trying to say?”
“What I mean is… If you go to the Carrot Principality and make any discriminatory remarks about Bunnyfolk, I can’t guarantee your safety. If you had some kind of powerful backing, it might be different, but you said your family situation hasn’t been great since your academy days, so you can’t exactly count on that.”
Basically, she was telling me not to be an idiot and blurt out something offensive in a neighborhood full of black people, or I’d get shot.
What the hell does she take me for?
I don’t dislike Bunnyfolk.
In fact, I actually like them quite a lot.
Aside from their rabbit ears and superior physical abilities, Bunnyfolk were no different from humans.
To emphasize once again, that means that in terms of the superior traits of rabbits—especially the alluring aspects of Bunnygirls—Bunnyfolk are actually superior to humans.
Maybe it was just how this world was set up, but I could never understand why people in this world disliked and discriminated against Bunnyfolk.
I scoffed and put on an exaggeratedly angry expression.
“Oh, come on. Ravi, you’ve known me for three years, and now you’re accusing me of being prejudiced against Bunnyfolk? Huh? I help you out, and this is how you repay me?”
“Huh? No, I wasn’t accusing you—I was just worried—”
“If I were a Bunnyfolk hater, would I have spent three years at the academy constantly flirting with you? You know the real racists can’t even stand being in the same room as Bunnyfolk, right? If I were one of them, do you think I’d be here, running dungeons with you and having a casual conversation?”
“Well… that’s true, but…”
“Apologize.”
“Huh?”
Ravi’s round eyes widened even further at my words.
“You accused me of being a racist. I’m giving you a chance, so apologize.”
“N-no, that’s not what I meant…”
“Apologize.”
“I-I’m sorry…?”
“There you go.”
With a bewildered Ravi beside me, I continued down the mountain path until we finally reached a road where people and carriages could pass.
As we walked toward the nearest town, we chatted about various things we hadn’t been able to discuss back in the academy.
Honestly, from my perspective, my only real memory of the academy was graduation day, so I was a bit at a loss.
But thankfully, the story seemed to have progressed just like in Loveholic, so there weren’t any major problems.
As we talked, I noticed that the shadow that had clouded Ravi’s face since graduation had significantly faded, and now she was smiling brightly.
“Haha! Yeah, I remember that! You know, back then, Elfin actually wanted to kill you, right?”
“Of course I do. Thanks to that, I couldn’t even talk to you guys for over a week.”
“Why didn’t you just give up? Most people would’ve been too scared to keep trying after all that. Did you seriously believe in the whole ‘if you try ten times, even the hardest tree will fall’ thing?”
“Well, there was a bit of that, but I mostly did it to spice up my otherwise dull academy life. And honestly, I just wanted to be involved with you guys, even if it was in a bad way. You guys were insanely popular among the male students, you know that? There were tons of guys who just wanted to get their faces noticed by you.”
“You mean Celine, Lenis, and Elfin, not me. I’m a Bunnyfolk, remember…”
Because of the deep-rooted discrimination, Ravi had a habit of occasionally belittling herself.
To correct her habit, I firmly grabbed Ravi’s sharp nose and gently wiggled it.
“Ow! Ah! What are you doing?!”
“You keep saying unnecessary things, so I’m giving you a penalty. Why do you keep belittling your own race in front of me? I told you, I like Bunnyfolk. If you keep saying things like that, what does that make me, the guy who kept flirting with you?”
“Honestly, I find it hard to believe. You’re the first human I’ve met who says that. Whether it’s the Empire or the Kingdom, they’re all pretty much the same. A human who likes Bunnyfolk… You’re not just saying this to win me over, are you? Just so you know, I don’t fall for flattery that easily.”
“Wow, my reputation is really in the gutter, huh? So, because Bryden isn’t here, you think I’m just seizing the opportunity to butter you up? Is that it?”
The moment I mentioned Bryden’s name, Ravi’s face visibly darkened.
Well, of course—she had only been dumped a few days ago. There was no way she had already gotten over the pain.
“Bryden… sniff.”
Her eyes welled up with tears. She sniffled and wiped them away, and seeing her like that, I awkwardly shifted my posture before speaking.
“I don’t have a handkerchief to lend you this time.”
“Sniff… I-it’s fine. I just lost control of my emotions for a moment.”
“Still struggling with it?”
“Of course, I am! It’s only been a few days… If I sit still, I keep thinking about it, so I came to the dungeon to get some distractions and find something useful to do for the country. But now that you brought it up again, it’s back in my head!”
“Oh… That wasn’t my intention. Sorry about that. But still, I really don’t get that guy’s decision.”
At my words, Ravi wiped her tears and looked at me.
“If you’re about to say something cliché like ‘You were better than Celine anyway,’ just stop right there.”
“Huh? No, what I meant was, if I were him, I wouldn’t have just picked one. I’d have taken Celine, you, Lenis, and Elfin—all of you. I don’t understand why he settled for just one.”
Ravi looked at me like I was a piece of trash.
“I was an idiot to see you in a different light, even for a second.”
But I was just stating the obvious!
This was an academy harem story, and the guy let go of multiple heroines?
That just defies common sense!
Since Ravi clearly didn’t share that sense, her wariness spiked again, and we barely spoke until we reached the city.
The fact that I wasn’t getting any backlash meant that nothing was seriously wrong, but… damn, the fate of someone who resists destiny is truly complicated.
After a long walk downhill, we finally arrived at the nearest small town and decided to rent a carriage.
“Is there a carriage heading to the Carrot Principality? We’ll pay the fare. It’s for two people.”
“Oh, our merchant caravan happens to be heading that way. Hop on. We’ll be departing right away.”
The small-scale merchant guild members who agreed to take us accepted our payment and let us ride in the cargo compartment of their caravan before leaving town.
Sitting inside the cargo area, I quietly observed my surroundings… and something felt off.
‘This cargo hold is too clean.’
This wasn’t just paranoia. It was a lesson learned from the cursed game Holy Knight Bryden NX.
In that game, whenever you traveled between towns without using your own horse or teleport device, you often had to hitch a ride on someone else’s transport, just like now.
These transports also acted as save points, but the problem was, if you skipped the journey to the destination, you’d often arrive only to find that all your items and gold had been stolen.
The reason?
Either the people offering the ride turned out to be bandits, or they were in cahoots with bandits and took you down a route where an ambush was waiting.
And since the save would already be locked in, you couldn’t reload to undo the mess—truly a shitty situation.
This particular mechanic played a major role in ruining the game.
Seriously, which piece of garbage thought this was a good idea?
Having been burned by this multiple times, I stopped skipping travel sequences and endured the tedious process of manually watching the journey play out.
Thanks to that, I learned several telltale signs of bandit-run transports.
If it was a genuine merchant caravan, the cargo hold would be filthy, the floor would be worn down, and there would be plenty of signs of trade.
But if it was a fake caravan used as a trap, the cargo hold would be unusually clean and well-maintained—just like this one.
After all, the wagon itself was just bait, so there was no reason to actually carry heavy loads for long distances.
Ravi, exhausted from fighting goblins in the dungeon, had already dozed off in the cargo hold.
I gripped my grimy sword at my waist.
‘Looks like the first test of my new skills will be against humans.’
To be continued…