Prologue: Wedding

Fluffy white clouds drifted through the clear spring sky. They made Sara think of the old meadow outside of Rosa.

“Those clouds are like woolly sheep,” she mused absentmindedly. Someone snorted with laughter beside her.

“Those would be some nasty clouds.”

“It’s fine. They look cute.”

Sara looked over at Allen, who was watching the sky next to her, but she couldn’t see his expression, blocked as it was by his muscular shoulder. Sara’s growth had stopped at some point, but Allen was still getting taller. She was almost certain he was taller than Ted now.

She smiled, imagining Ted’s frustrated face. But they weren’t in Rosa right now. They were in the well-kept garden of House Wolverié’s Hydrangea estate, where a crowd of well-dressed guests were mingling and chatting, drinks in hand.

Today was, after all, the reception for Nelly and Chris’s wedding. The stars of the event were at the church, and everyone at the party, Sara included, was awaiting their return.

Despite being reincarnated into this world by the Goddess Herself, Sara hadn’t had much to do with this world’s religion thus far, but Trilgaians all believed in the Goddess and there was a church in every town. Due to the Goddess’s intimate relation to the world, however, churches didn’t have any real authority and were only places where people prayed at important milestones in their life, giving their thanks and reports to the Goddess.

When Sara thought about the happy couple making their wedding vows in the church right now, she thought of Rosa once again.

“Yeah, I guess so. Man, how many years has it been since then?”

Even if she didn’t say anything, Allen knew exactly what she was thinking about. That was just how much time the two of them spent together.

“It’s been five years.”

Last fall, Sara and Allen had turned seventeen. They’d first met in the fall after they had both just turned twelve.

“Back then, you said you were looking for a relative who had left home and hadn’t come back.”

Sara felt a little awkward thinking back to when they’d first met.

“Yeah. Man, now that I think about it, everyone in Rosa must have thought I was some kid who’d been abandoned.”

“I dunno...” Allen smiled ambiguously, but she was sure he remembered exactly what it had been like five years ago. He quickly schooled his expression and said, “You were too put-together and polite to be some kid who was abandoned. Personally, I thought you were some ignorant noble kid who had been raised with care and you were just in some trouble. That’s why I was so curious about why you were on your own.”

“I was really suspicious, wasn’t I?”

Some people had been unkind to her, but she had nothing but gratitude for most of Rosa, who had accepted such a strange child with almost no qualms.

“But after doubting whether that relative of yours actually existed or not, the first time I saw her, she was lifting the guildmaster up by his shirt and you were crying... I had no idea what was going on.”

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy...”

She felt a little heat gathering in the back of her nose when she thought back to that moment, but it was no time to be crying. A big cheer was going up around her, and when she turned to see what everyone was looking at, she spotted House Wolverié’s magnificent carriage coming to a quiet stop.

“It’s a bit late, but is it okay that you didn’t go to the church with them? You’re Nelly’s family, aren’t you?”

“It’s fine. I wanted them to make their marriage vows without their kid in tow.”

The mansion’s butler reverently opened the carriage’s doors and the local lord, Ri, stepped down out of the vehicle first. The next to appear was Sara’s beloved Nelly. The gathered crowd let out a collective sigh of amazement. Nelly’s hair, which she usually tied high atop her head, was instead fastened loosely at the base of her neck. She wore an ivory dress with ample lace that brought out the green of her eyes and the red of her hair in a beautiful way.

Nelly took her father Ri’s hand and slowly alighted from the carriage, and the final occupant, a smiling Chris, appeared.

Nelly’s brother Thedias and his own family surrounded the happy couple. Her sister Latifah wasn’t able to leave her husband’s domain and they hadn’t been able to contact her other brother Elm since he was a bit of a drifter, but plenty of other people had come to celebrate with them to make up for their absence. No flowers or rice flew through the air like the weddings Sara was familiar with, but the people around Nelly and Chris were clearly celebrating their union.

“I’m like a little sister or a kid to Nelly, right? She trusts me with my barrier, but I know she still feels like she always has to protect me. If I were with her, she’d be thinking of me and not Chris.”

“I get it. So that’s why you stayed behind.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to get in Chris’s way today if I can help it. Or in the way of the two of them, really.”

“Hey! What are you two doing?! Get over here!” Kuntz called to them from Nelly’s side. Nelly was glancing around like she was looking for someone.

“But this is no time to reminisce about the past! It’s the present that’s most important!” Sara ran over to Nelly while Allen followed her more slowly. “Nelly, Chris! Congratulations! You look so beautiful!”

Nelly spread her arms wide, looking a little bashful. “You saw me before we went to the church, didn’t you?”

Nelly hugged Sara tight and Sara returned her embrace without hesitation.

“Well, you’re pretty no matter how many times I see you!”

Life was short. You never knew what might happen. Sara thought it was important to say what you were thinking even if it meant repeating yourself. It was one of her small regrets that she hadn’t expressed her gratitude more often to the family who had taken such good care of her in her old life.

Sara pulled back from Nelly and Allen gave her a bashful congratulations of his own. Nelly just grew more embarrassed, while Chris’s smile widened. After that, they were swallowed up by the crowd, busy accepting congratulations from all of their visitors. It wasn’t just nobles in attendance but the Hunters and apothecaries acquainted with them as well, and each and every one of them was smiling at the happy couple.

“I never thought I’d see my son like this.”

Before she knew it, Sara found a tall, thin woman standing beside her. The beautiful lady had her silky silver hair tied back, not a strand out of place, with eyes the pale blue of the winter sky. Ri looked young for his age as well, but this woman definitely didn’t look old enough to have grandchildren herself. The way she expressed an emotional sentiment without changing her expression at all was just like Chris.

“You’re Chris’s mother...err, Madam Deltmont?”

“You can call me Maria. You’re like a daughter to me as well now. No, a granddaughter, I suppose,” she said, her eyes still on Chris. “I thought his feelings would remain one-sided for the rest of his life. Look. I’ve never seen him look so happy before, even when he was a child.”

“Umm, yes... He does look happy, doesn’t he?” Sara would prefer that she didn’t say things that were so difficult to respond to.

Chris’s mother wasn’t the only family in attendance at the party. His father, who had already passed leadership of the family on to his son, had enough time on his hands to attend as well. Nelly’s brother Thed’s family was there as well, so Sara felt like she’d gained a lot of relatives all of a sudden.

The reason they were all kind to her might have been because she was one of the Invited, or because she was under the care of Nelly and Chris, but Sara liked to think at least a few of these connections were the fruits of her own efforts.

“Still, I can’t believe he’s leaving the family to get married just to stay with the Wolveriés. I have nothing against Ri, of course.”

“No, I know what you mean.”

Sara nodded along when Chris’s mother sighed. The Wolveriés had stepped up to become her guardians. That was the whole reason they’d come to Hydrangea in the first place. Since it was Nelly’s home, Sara accepted their kindness without reservation, and Chris had been staying at their mansion as a guest all this time as well. But Sara had assumed that when they got married, they’d leave the mansion and live together somewhere, just the two of them.

She was already seventeen, and she didn’t want to get in the newlyweds’ way, so she figured she’d stay back in the mansion herself and only go to visit Nelly’s house every so often.

Chris had finally worked up the courage to propose in Gardenia, but it seemed he hadn’t thought much about what would come after that. The two of them were dragging their feet even though they were both well past the age of forty, and finally everyone around them had gotten so fed up with them that they’d taken it upon themselves to organize this party for the springtime—in other words, now.

Since they hadn’t even considered the reception, naturally the two of them hadn’t considered their living situation after the marriage at all either. They had continued delving into dungeons on the daily even while the party was being arranged, so their newlywed life would have to begin in a corner of the Wolverié mansion as a matter of course.

Naturally, Ri was thrilled that he wouldn’t have to part with his beloved daughter. “It’s a pointlessly large mansion. Use it however you see fit,” was what he’d had to say on the subject.

And so, their lives would be unchanged from before the wedding aside from Nelly simply moving rooms within the mansion. Sara wondered if that was really fine, but she knew the two of them had no life skills whatsoever, so it was probably for the best. Still, she understood why Maria was sighing about her son, who was perfectly capable at his job but completely useless at everything else. She’d spent more than enough time with Chris and Nelly to understand.

“We sent word ahead that we’d be coming, but he was in the dungeon up until yesterday and we only saw him the morning of the reception! I wonder if I went wrong somewhere raising him...”

“No, I think he’d have turned out that way no matter how you raised him,” Sara said without thinking. Belatedly, she wondered if the comment might have been rude to make to his mother.

“I suppose you’re right. Now that I think about it, nothing ever went the way I thought it would with him ever since he was just a little boy.” There was plenty of affection in the woman’s eyes as she watched Chris, so Sara was sure that he’d been raised with love.

Eventually, the party died down and the guests took their leave, finally leaving the residents of the mansion with only a pleasant fatigue. When the bride and groom changed into their usual attire and they all sat down for dinner and some tea, Sara was left feeling a bit bemused. She was a little tired, but it was just too normal an end to a day when there’d been a wedding.

That was why Sara had to inquire, “I know I asked this before, but you’re not going on a honeymoon?”

The last time she’d asked, she’d been surprised to learn that honeymoons weren’t a custom in Trilgaia. She’d been told that here, the most important thing after just being married was thought to be getting accustomed to the couple’s new life together. The difference in their cultures was interesting to her. When she thought about it more after that, she realized that not even nobles could go on casual trips whenever they wanted here, so maybe it made sense that they didn’t go on honeymoons.

Still, Chris had seemed somewhat interested in the custom, so she was wondering if their plans had changed since then.

“Well, I am interested in dungeons I’ve never been to before...”

“That’s just work, Nelly,” Sara couldn’t help herself from saying.

“I’m interested in dungeons I haven’t seen yet before as well. Their vegetation, to be more precise.”

“Like husband, like wife, huh?”

Chris wasn’t any better. But when she called them husband and wife, the two of them blushed faintly and looked away from each other a bit, which made Sara realize they really had just gotten married today.

Chris cleared his throat and turned to Sara with a serious look on his face. “Whether we’re married or not or on a trip or not, it won’t change the fact that Nef and I will always be together.”

“Is that something you have to look so serious about?” But it was just like Chris to say something like that with a completely straight face. Sara knew that well.

“And anyway, you’ve hardly the time to be worrying about us. Are you ready, Sara?”

“Huh? Am I ready?” Sara cocked her head at Chris’s question. She had no idea what he was asking her. Ready for what?

“Has Caren not told you? What about Nef?”

“I haven’t heard anything...”

Now that she thought about it, people had seemed a little on edge at the Apothecary’s Guild for the last few days, but it was only the veteran apothecaries. The younger ones like Sara had just been working like usual, and Caren hadn’t told her anything in particular that she could remember.

Chris sighed loudly, which she didn’t think was warranted. “A large patch of supreme healing herbs was found in the depths of the dungeon.”

“Supreme healing herbs,” Sara repeated. Such a thing hadn’t been in her medicinal plant guide. Chris sometimes told her about plants that weren’t in the guide, but he’d never told her about these before.

Sara glanced over at Nelly, who was making a face that seemed to say, Oops. She must have forgotten to pass on this message. It was just like Nelly, Sara thought, relaxing a bit.

But they saw each other every day, so couldn’t Chris have told her as a fellow apothecary? She looked back toward Chris, who was shaking his head as if to say, Good grief. That ticked Sara off a little.

“So what do these supreme healing herbs have to do with me getting ready for something?” That was the important thing at the moment.

“Mm. Supreme healing herbs are somewhat mythological plants that are hardly ever found, you see.”

“Wow...” Sara had to admit that she was interested after hearing that, since she enjoyed gathering plants. But that wasn’t important right now. She kept quiet, waiting for Chris to continue.

“Supreme potions can be crafted from supreme healing herbs.”

“Supreme potions.” She was an apothecary herself, but she’d never heard of such a variety of potion.

“Supreme potions are effective at treating injuries that not even greater potions can heal.”

Greater potions could heal wounds from a wolf mauling, so Sara was shocked to hear that there were potions with even greater effects.

“Their effects aren’t a sure thing, however. Whether they work or not depends on the injured person’s vitality.”

That sounded somewhat dangerous.

“Err, so you mean...?”

“It’s a medicine that’s so strong it can deal the final blow instead if the injured person is too weak.”

“Eek! How could you use it, then?”

“It’s not like there’s a steady supply of them since their ingredients are so rare. They’re highly valuable items that it’s very difficult to find a use for. Some adventurers who delve deep into dungeons carry them as a sort of last resort, to use when they’ll die anyway if they don’t. Most apothecaries know of them but haven’t ever crafted one themselves. In Hydrangea, Caren’s probably the only one who has,” Chris said bluntly.

“I have one. Right here.” Nelly took a potion bottle out of the pouch she always had on her and set it on the table.

“Wow, it’s such a deep red...” Sara picked it up gingerly and examined it from a few different angles. It was in the same sort of bottle as a regular potion, but the liquid inside was a sickening red color. Aside from that, it looked no different than any other potion.

“I always make sure Nef has one, after all.”

Sara typically didn’t have any issue with the Nef-love Chris constantly peppered into his interactions, but she was a little annoyed by it right now, so she ignored it for the moment.

“I’ve never been reckless enough to need one, so I can’t tell you how it feels to use one.” Behind Nelly’s words was the weight of a veteran Hunter’s experience.

“I see. Thanks for showing me something so valuable.” Sara set the supreme potion down in front of Nelly.

“So, what does this have to do with me?” She returned the conversation back to its starting point. Chris always left too many things out and jumped from one subject to the next with no warning. It was hard to figure out what he was getting at when he did this.

“As I said before, it’s very rare for an apothecary to have experience crafting one of these potions. But we have a stock of supreme healing herbs available to us now, so I’d like for all of Hydrangea’s apothecaries to have the experience while they have the chance to.”

By “all of Hydrangea’s apothecaries” he must have meant...

“So I get to make one too?!” Sara stood, her chair clattering behind her. She had only been an apothecary for three years at this point. It was an extraordinary stroke of luck if she’d have the opportunity to craft such a potion so rare that Caren was the only one in Hydrangea who had ever made one before.

“Of course. It will also serve as your graduation exam,” Chris proclaimed solemnly.

Sara wasn’t quite sure what he meant since she was already an apothecary and as far as she knew, apothecaries didn’t have a graduation exam. She decided to keep the comment to herself and just thank Chris instead.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity... Do you think I’ll be able to do it, though?” Sara clasped her hands together in front of her chest in both gratitude and anxiousness.

“Ha ha ha, there’s no need to worry,” Chris said cheerily. “Sara, how do you make a greater potion?”

“You just use greater healing herbs instead of regular ones.”

There was nothing difficult about making a potion. It was just that not everyone could prepare the herbs beforehand carefully enough and maintain a stable output of mana. That was why there weren’t many apothecaries.

“Precisely. The ingredients are the only difference. How do you suppose a superior potion is made, then?”

“Err, the same way as a regular potion, just with superior healing herbs?”

Chris nodded, satisfied. “Correct.”

Sara was relieved to hear it, though at the same time, she wondered if that was really all there was to it. Alarm bells were going off in her head. Would Chris really make something so simple her “graduation exam”? No, she wasn’t supposed to have a graduation exam in the first place. When Chris next opened his mouth, her fears proved to be spot-on.

“But you are my apprentice, after all. Any apothecary can make a supreme healing potion as long as they have the herbs. I wouldn’t make such a task your graduation exam. That’s why...” Sara felt a chill when the usually expressionless Chris gave her a sunny smile. “...Your exam will be crafting the potion from supreme healing herbs you gather from the dungeon yourself.”

“Whaaat?!”

Sara found herself wishing more than ever that the newlyweds would just go on a honeymoon already.

Chapter 1: Graduation Exam

“Of course, I would never tell you to go by yourself. I’ll accompany you while I’m doing my own gathering,” Chris said as if to emphasize how thoughtful he was.

“You’d better!” Sara shot back, flaring her nostrils. “I don’t even know what supreme healing herbs look like in the first place!”

They weren’t in her guide, so if Chris wanted her to gather them, he’d have to tell her what they looked like. She’d grown enough to at least talk back to him that much at this point.

There was something Sara had yet to realize, however: that she had no hesitation whatsoever heading down into the depths of a dungeon even veteran Hunters struggled with, and that such a thing would have been impossible for any normal apothecary. Still, some part of her understood that it was only natural for her to have a tough graduation exam when she had her barrier and near-limitless mana at her disposal.

When Sara went in to work on the next day, the Apothecary’s Guild was in chaos. Sara had been planning to grumble to her coworkers about wanting to only stick to the potion brewing like they were. She liked gathering plants, but the depths of the dungeons were filled with bug monsters, so she’d rather avoid them if she could. But it didn’t seem like the sort of atmosphere for grousing.

Some of the apothecaries were staring off into space, their hands clasped in front of their chests, and some were talking with their coworkers with so much enthusiasm that spit was flying from their mouths. And when they noticed her, they all crowded around her, so she took a few steps back reflexively.

“Sara, thank you!”

“We heard you’re going to go pick enough supreme healing herbs for everyone to use!”

“Err...”

While Sara tried to keep up with what they were saying, they explained the situation to her. Sara had been wondering why Chris was absent at the breakfast table; apparently, he’d gone to the Apothecary’s Guild early and promised this favor from Sara to everyone there. It seemed they’d had an understanding from the start that as long as enough supreme healing herbs were gathered, the apothecaries at the guild would be able to craft supreme potions with them, starting with the more experienced members. Aside from Sara, who was always the last to hear about anything, everyone at the guild was aware of this and was already anxiously awaiting when it might be their turn.

“I mean, I’ve never seen a supreme healing herb before, so I’m not all that confident in my ability to gather that many of them...” At this point, there was no way she could complain to them about not wanting to go.

“Here’s an example.” The door to the guildmaster’s office suddenly opened and Caren strolled out. It was a little funny to imagine her listening in on the conversation on the other side of the door, waiting for her moment to enter, but regardless, she held out the small basket that was in her hand and set it down on the table, opening up the lid.

“Ooh...” All of the apothecaries, not just Sara, crowded around it and peered down into the basket.

“The potion’s red, but the herb is a deep purple.” The plant’s leaves were thick and heart-shaped. “It might actually be pretty easy to spot.”

“You can just pick it from the third node down, like this one. It only takes three herbs to craft a superior potion, so if we factor in enough for mistakes, we should still have plenty...” She hesitated to continue, displaying a rare reticence. “I know you’re well defended, and Master Chris seems to think this will be a good graduation exam for you, so you’ll probably be fine, but I’m still worried about sending an apothecary to the depths of the dungeon just to gather plants...”

Sara was about to retort that Caren was the one who’d asked her to set up an Apothecary’s Guild branch in the dungeon when she was just a rookie (albeit in a safe zone), but if she was worried even with all that, then it just went to show how dangerous the depths of the dungeon were. Sara’s heart warmed at the guildmaster’s genuine concern for her.

Silence descended on the Apothecary’s Guild for a few moments.

“I-I can wait. There’s no need to push yourself, Sara.”

“I’m good too.”

The apothecaries who had been so eager just a moment ago were all showing restraint now, but it was obvious that they wanted to make the potions if they could. Sara was an apothecary too, so she understood what they were all feeling.

“It’s fine. I was just a little unprepared for this. Chris is always springing things like this on me without warning,” Sara said with a wry smile. When she thought about it in a little more detail, she liked gathering plants and she’d gone down into the depths of the dungeon at least once before, during the continental tortoise incident, so she should be fine, she decided.

A wave of relief went through the room. Then, there was a knock on the door, before the door opened.

“Hey, Sara.”

“We’re here to get you.”

It was Kuntz and Allen, who usually came to get her on their way home from the dungeon.

“Huh? What? Why?” Sara had no idea what was going on, as usual.

“You’re going deep down into the dungeon, right? Why didn’t you tell us? There’s no need to be shy!” Kuntz said with a grin.

Shy? Sara had only heard about this yesterday!

“If you’re going into the dungeon, I’m going with you,” Allen said, giving her a thumbs-up. There was a big grin on his face too. Allen was always excited about Sara going into the dungeon.

“Err, not today, though, right? I only heard about this yesterday. I wanted to get ready and make some plans before I went.” She was happy to have them with her, but it didn’t make sense for them to be coming to get her now, right?

“But Nelly and Chris were waiting for you.”

“That’s news to me. No one told me we were meeting or anything.” Sara replayed the conversation they’d had last night in her mind. Chris had said that he would go with her, but he hadn’t mentioned a date or anything, so she had assumed she’d be able to go whenever she was mentally prepared.

“Well, how long do you think it’ll take you to get ready?” Allen was always like this when it came to dungeons. “Let’s see... Do you have what you’ll need?”

She didn’t like him rushing her like this, but since he’d asked, she found herself answering.

“Err, it’s all in my pouch, I guess.” Not just her gathering gear either. She had her standard stock of emergency rations fully prepared as well.

“Do you have any work you need to do at the Apothecary’s Guild?”

Sara gave Caren a hopeful look, but Caren just shrugged. “If Master Chris is waiting for you, then I’d say that’s probably your highest priority task here.”

She should have known better than to ask a Chris fangirl like her, who seemed happy to run the guild like a benevolent business—the kind that gave its employees time off whenever they needed it. In other words, there was no issue with her work whatsoever if Sara headed off to the dungeon right this instant.

Allen gave her a look that said, Well, what are you waiting for? Ooh, Sara could just punch him.

“What about mental preparations?! I’m not emotionally prepared!” Sara wailed with sincere misery.

“Ha ha ha!”

Allen chuckled, though this was not a laughing matter as far as Sara was concerned.

“Okay, c’mon. Let’s go.”

“Fine...” Sara said with a sigh. It pained her to say it, but she was used to such unfairness. “Caren, everybody, I guess I’ll be in the dungeon for a little while.”

“Not really the attitude I’d suggest taking in there. Really, be careful, okay?”

Even with Chris’s assurances, Caren was still worried about sending a young apothecary into the depths of the dungeon. Still, she saw Sara off with a smile.

“Been a while since we’ve gone into a monster-filled dungeon together,” Allen said to Sara, much more upbeat than he usually was. In contrast, Kuntz walked with his eyes set forward, a serious look on his face.

“It really has. The green grass locusts last year weren’t actually monsters, and we didn’t go into a dungeon for that, so it’s been at least a year.”

It wasn’t that Sara had stayed out of the dungeon for all that time. Though reluctantly, she did go in to gather plants sometimes, and she’d even been into the depths to pick silver dragonmint. It was just that her schedule hadn’t matched up with Allen’s the last few times she’d gone.

“I’m only ever going into the dungeon for Chris’s nonsense. Makes me wonder if he actually knows what a favor even is, let alone how to ask for one.”

“Ha ha ha. Well, it is Chris.”

Chris was just the sort of person who got away with things like that. And unfortunately, the same could be said of Nelly.

“Now that I think about it, the two of them are both pretty ridiculous.”

“But that’s why you can’t leave them alone, right?”

“You got me there.” Hence Sara’s relatively easy acceptance of said ridiculousness when it was directed at her. “By the way, what’s up with Kuntz?” Unlike when he’d come to get her before, his expression seemed conflicted, which Sara was curious about.

“He’s always like that,” Allen said, unconcerned.

Kuntz gave her a wry smile. “I’m finally more or less used to the depths of the dungeon, but my mana and firepower are still pretty weak compared to Allen’s. It’s not easy enough for me to just stroll down there humming.”

Kuntz was in a party with Allen, so when Sara was wrapped up in things, he usually came along for the ride. As a result, he’d gotten a reputation for being fairly capable for his young age. But he was still a mage who was entirely dependent on his mana, so he was less capable than Hunters who specialized in physical strengthening.

“I’m a Hunter, so I’m happy about going down into the depths, but since I’m not that strong, I have to prepare myself every time.”

“I really respect that about you, Kuntz. It’s important to be prepared,” Sara said with a nod.

“So what do you think about me, then?” asked Allen.

“About you? Uhh...” Sara was a bit taken aback by the question, since Allen didn’t usually try to compare himself to Kuntz or seek compliments from people. “I think you’re impressive too, Allen.”

“Nothing specific to say, eh?”

They arrived at the dungeon as they chatted, where they found Nelly and Chris waiting for them.

“You guys just got married yesterday...” Sara murmured. She didn’t think she could be blamed for her incredulity.

Chris and Nelly were completely unbothered by that fact, however.

“Well, shall we get going?”

There was only one thing she could say to Chris, as his student: “Very well.”

If she was going, she’d at least enjoy the gathering and the scenery. Sara headed for the dungeon in high spirits.

They were headed for the lowest part of the dungeon, the fifteenth floor. While they would take breaks on their way, they would go straight there without stopping for anything else. Growing up on the Dark Mountain had afforded Sara a decent amount of stamina, but apparently her reserves had shrunk somewhat during her days of commuting to the Apothecary’s Guild. It was well past noon by the time they finally arrived at their destination and Sara’s shoulders were heaving as she panted for breath.

“Whew... My stamina’s gone way down...”

She knew there was no point in comparing herself with Hunters, but she had to admit it was a little frustrating that Chris was totally fine when he was not only a fellow apothecary but quite a bit older than her as well.

“Well, things are different now than they were when you were trying to get down to Rosa from the Dark Mountain. Even young Hunters with a lot of stamina would get tired coming all the way down here in one go like this. You shouldn’t let it bother you.”

Since the two young Hunters with them and Chris were all perfectly fine, Nelly’s words weren’t convincing at all. Still, Sara was at least happy that Nelly was trying to stay at her pace.

Sara took a deep breath and looked up, spying some familiar scenery. Two years ago, hellhounds had emerged from the dungeon wall just in front of her. She could still remember the sensation of the unseen monsters struggling against her barrier.

“After that, the continental tortoise came out of there, and we went through that whole mess,” Allen grumbled. He had every right to after being caught up in the knights’ brainless plan.

After the continental tortoise had departed for the Dark Mountain, however, the dungeon’s walls had stopped fluctuating. No more monsters had emerged from them since then, so they were safe now (or safe from that particular danger, at least).

“If it happened now, I’d be able to put up a better fight,” Allen said with a confident clench of his fists. He’d probably gotten even stronger in the time Sara hadn’t been watching him.

Still, this gave Sara pause. He seemed a little different from his usual self. She didn’t know how much stronger he was now than he’d been then, but she still didn’t think he’d be able to beat a continental tortoise of all things. Back then, he’d admitted that he’d gotten overenthusiastic in his inexperience. Had he forgotten that now?

While Allen was looking at the wall reflecting on those bitter memories, Sara was debating whether she should point out what she was thinking, but she missed her chance when Allen suddenly held his hand up to shade his eyes.

“There’s someone in front of the wall. Well, probably not a problem if we’re this far apart.”

The deepest floor of the dungeon was a spacious mix of forest and meadow, so it was rare to bump into another Hunter down there. Still, they had to be mindful of their surroundings, especially Kuntz with his magic.

“Is that...?” Nelly held her hand up above her eyes like Allen.

“Someone you know, Nelly?”

“Looks like. Let’s go check it out.”

Allen and Nelly were going to go see the other Hunter, it seemed. Sara couldn’t concern herself with such things, however. Her graduation exam was about to begin. Well, it was more just that her eyes were fixed to the ground in front of her, where she’d just spotted some purple plants.

“Th-These are...” She knelt down and looked around, almost on her hands and knees. It wasn’t a very ladylike position, she was aware, but it was easier to find plants from a lower angle like this.

On the way to the forest to her right, there were short heart-shaped leaves all over the place hiding in between taller plants.

“Chris! This is it, right?!”

“That’s right. I don’t recall teaching you about them yet, though,” he said with some surprise. He knelt down beside her and ran a hand over one of the purple plants.

“Caren showed me one this morning.”

“That’s a guildmaster for you. Did she tell you how to pick them as well?”

“Yes. The third node from the top,” she recited.

“Good.” Chris stood, satisfied with her answer, and gestured toward the forest to their right. “They’re very valuable herbs, but with this many of them growing here, we shouldn’t have to limit ourselves. Just pick them in the same way you would normal healing herbs.”

“Okay!”

Sara got out her gathering basket right away and began carefully plucking herbs one by one. She needed three times the number of apothecaries at the guild plus a number of spares. Though Chris had said they didn’t need to limit themselves, they were still very precious plants, so Sara was careful not to deplete their amount completely.

Before long, Sara was finished. She stood, stretching her back. She might have been young, but it was still tiring to be bent over for so long.

“Huh?” She looked around and found herself alone.

From her training on the Dark Mountain, Sara always had a barrier around her that she could maintain unconsciously. When she went into dungeons, she was even more careful with it, strengthening it and expanding it to cover a wider area around her. Sara was aware of her own cowardice, and she was confident she’d lose her cool if a monster got too close to her.

In other words, there was no need for anyone to protect her. Yet she still felt uneasy when she was fully on her own, and she was a little indignant at Allen’s absence when he was supposed to be looking out for her.

“He was the one who came to get me and now he ditches me?” she grumbled, looking around. Eventually, she spotted everyone gathered around the wall from where the continental tortoise had emerged. Luckily, Kuntz was standing in between that group and Sara, and when he noticed her stand up, he waved at her. She hadn’t been completely abandoned, it seemed.

“I wonder if something happened...”

Sara stowed her basket in her pouch and hurried over to where everyone was. As she got closer, she could see them discussing something, pointing at the wall. In addition to Chris and Nelly, there was one other person, the Hunter Allen had been looking at earlier.

“Wait, is that red hair?”

The figure was lanky and taller than Chris. They had hair that was red like Nelly’s messily tied behind their head. Their face sort of resembled Nelly’s from the side as well. Sara wondered if this might be Nelly’s second older brother, who was apparently wandering Trilgaia as a Hunter without settling down anywhere.

“Kuntz.”

“Sara, sorry for leaving you like that. Looks like we’ve got a pretty rare visitor, though.”

“Is it Nelly’s...?”

“Yep, her other older brother.”

“Oh, umm...” Sara recalled the name she’d heard just before the wedding ceremony. “Elm Wolverié?”

“Yep. I haven’t heard much, since I came over here right away. I was kind of worried about you. All I got was that he missed the wedding, so he figured he’d come see the spot where the continental tortoise came from instead.”

Sara’s guess had been right on the mark, but her surprise and exasperation won out over her satisfaction, causing her to exclaim, “Shouldn’t he have come to Ri’s mansion first?!”

“Right?” Kuntz agreed with a bit of a grin.

Allen, meanwhile, was watching the chatting adults with a look of absolute admiration.

Sara shrugged as she headed for the group with Kuntz. “Well, it makes sense that Nelly would want to talk to her brother if she hasn’t seen him in a long time, and of course Allen would be interested in meeting a super strong wandering Hunter.”

“Allen’s Nelly’s student, after all. He’s bound to be interested in someone who Nelly looks up to.”

Nelly’s other two siblings, Thedias and Latifah, had left rather strong first impressions, so Sara approached the group with a bit of apprehension. But her earlier loneliness had faded, replaced by an excitement that spurred her forward.

She thought she felt her vision sway for a moment on her way, however, and hurriedly stopped.

“Sara?”

“Sorry, wait a second.” Even she wasn’t sure what exactly it was she’d noticed, so she turned her attention to her surroundings carefully. “A sound?”

It was faint, but she thought she could hear the sound of something hard scraping against something else. She turned her head this way and that, unable to pinpoint where it was coming from.

She was looking forward, when she’d first felt something odd. “It’s just a wall over there, but...”

The sound was getting louder and louder, shaking the very air itself.

“What? What’s that sound?” Kuntz had started observing their surroundings as well, taking Sara’s cue, and he’d finally noticed the sound himself.

“Dizziness? Vertigo? There’s something strange...”

She felt like the wall in front of her was indistinct somehow. She clutched at her chest, feeling almost like she was drunk. Nelly’s brother turned around, having noticed her, but Sara had no time to marvel at how similar his face was to Nelly’s. He noticed the fear on Sara’s face as she watched the swaying wall and turned to look at the wall himself.

“Get back!” he shouted right when a small stone rolled down from somewhere higher up the wall. After the small stone, two large boulders peeled off and fell down after it. Standing a slight distance away from the wall, Sara could see the shapes of the falling boulders clearly.

“Gargoyles!”

Nelly had taken Sara gargoyle-hunting a few times on the Dark Mountain, so she’d seen the way they rolled down cliffs before. But this wasn’t a cliff. It was just the stone wall of a dungeon.

Sure enough, though, the falling boulders had vague face- and limb-like features and they seemed able to direct themselves as they rolled down the wall in a way that normal rocks most definitely could not.

She knew Nelly could take down gargoyles, but what if the entire wall was made of them? Could she beat that many of them?

“There’s no way...”

She’d hardly gotten the thought out when Kuntz grabbed her hand.

“Sara! Let’s go!” he said, pulling her away from the wall.

“But...!”

Nelly and Chris could both see the gargoyles, but neither of them had moved yet.

“Worry about yourself first!”

They were off and running before Sara even had time to argue. There was a low rumble beneath them as a gust of dusty wind hit Sara’s barrier. The wind went by rather quickly, however. Maybe the scale of the collapse hadn’t been that large.

Sara stopped and looked back with Kuntz, a faint hope in her heart.

“Aah!”

“Oh, crud!”

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

The wall had collapsed into a pile of gargoyles indistinguishable at a glance from normal rocks. It wasn’t very large-scale, true, but it was more than enough to swallow up the people directly beneath it. But she had no time to be stunned by the sight.

“Nelly! Chris!”

“Allen!”

What had happened to the people standing directly below the wall? Just as Sara started running toward them, there was a crash and a few gargoyles went flying.

“Nelly! Oh...!”

The person who stood, having sent the gargoyles flying, was the tall man with the same red hair as Nelly. But Sara didn’t have time to be disappointed. After all, if he’d emerged from beneath the gargoyles, then it meant everyone else standing next to him was down there too.

“Damn it! My magic isn’t good against gargoyles!” Kuntz clenched his fists beside her in frustration.

Sara hesitated as well, watching the man who was throwing gargoyles left and right as soon as he’d unearthed himself.

“What can I do with my barrier?” The more she panicked, the more she froze up. “If I at least knew where they were... I know!”

Sara reached out next to Kuntz, who could do nothing but shoot stones at the gargoyles to keep them away from the rubble.

“If I squeeze my barrier in through the gaps in the gargoyles...” Sara could decide what to let through her barrier and what to block. It could change its shape flexibly and flowed through the gaps in the gargoyles like water. “Just need to search for something that’s not rock... They should be close to the ground...”

Sara narrowed her eyes, concentrating on the sensations she could feel through her barrier. “There! On the right, two o’clock! Where there are three gargoyles. Nelly’s under Chris!”

From their shapes, she could tell that they were lying on top of one another, but she couldn’t tell if they were breathing or not.

“I’m going to create some space around Chris and Nelly!” She had to get the weight of the gargoyles off of them for now.

She thought about pulling them out with her barrier as well, but the gargoyles on top of them looked poised to collapse even more. If she could just give them some space, they should be able to manage something. She closed her barrier around them and expanded it a bit, and she could sense Nelly stirring inside it. Sara let out a deep sigh. Thank goodness.

“What in the world are you...? No, that can come later.” The red-haired man started flinging away the gargoyles in the area Sara had indicated.

“Sara! What about Allen?!”

“Not yet. He’s next.”

Even Sara couldn’t search two separate places at once. But she’d managed to give Chris and Nelly some space. Next was Allen, and she’d already found him by the time Kuntz asked. She quickly produced some space for him with her barrier.

“Allen!”

Though there were gargoyles writhing on top of him, he was only a few meters away from her. Her voice should reach him. Sara called for him, but Allen didn’t budge within her barrier. She was starting to get worried.

“I see them! You, the mage! Come help me!”

“Right!”

Sara glanced over and found Chris and Nelly being pulled from the mound of gargoyles. She sighed in relief. If she didn’t need to worry about anyone else getting crushed under the gargoyles, she could pull Allen out herself.

“Please get as far away as you can,” Sara called as she backed up as well. She widened the barrier around Allen, giving him a bubble of space.

“I caught all those seven-colored swallowtails and brought them down, so I should be able to move a person in my barrier.” Sara gently lifted the barrier with Allen inside it. “It doesn’t feel heavy at all. I can do this. Okay!”

She didn’t know how long it would take to move all the gargoyles on top of Allen, so she tugged him out of the pile herself, barrier and all. Giving him a quick look as an apothecary, she was relieved to find that he didn’t have any noticeable external wounds.

“How’d she do that?”

She could hear the red-haired man’s dumbfounded voice, but she ignored him and carefully moved Allen over to where Nelly and Chris were, laying him down next to them.

“How are Nelly and Chris?”

She ran her eyes over them as well. Their chests were moving up and down slowly and she didn’t see any external wounds on them either, to her relief.

“Impact probably just knocked ’em out. They should wake up soon. To be safe...”

“Yes. A greater potion.” Sara swiftly sprinkled a greater potion over each of them.

“The problem is this boy.” The red-haired man knelt down next to Allen and held his hand up to his face. It should have been Sara’s job as an apothecary, but frankly, she’d never examined a badly wounded patient before, and Allen was unconscious, so she wasn’t sure what to do. She was grateful for the man’s help, but their problems didn’t end at treating the injured.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

The pile of gargoyles had started shambling toward them.

“Eek! Gargoyles do more than just fall on you?”

On the Dark Mountain, at least, all they’d done was tumble down cliffs and then writhe around a bit. Yet these ones had sprouted arms and legs that looked a little more like limbs than the vague shapes she’d seen earlier and the fastest one was already getting close to them.

“If all they could do was fall, how do you think they’d get back up to the top of the cliff?” the red-haired man said exasperatedly, but there was no time for a lesson on gargoyle ecology. Sara placed her protection cases around the injured trio, and spread her barrier around the whole group of them as well.

“Okay.” The man took a look around and nodded, carefully lifting Allen into a sitting position.

“Allen...” She hadn’t noticed while she was carrying him, but Allen’s head was bright red. He must have been hit by a gargoyle. Sara hurriedly took a greater potion out of her pouch and poured it over his head. She was furious at herself for failing to notice the wound in her examination earlier.

The wound started to close up, but it was healing slower than usual, Sara noticed with a frown.

The red-haired man placed his palm against Allen’s back and, with a grunt, slapped it.

“Koff!” Allen coughed like he was hacking something up before sucking a deep breath in.

The man gently laid him down again and put an ear to his now rhythmically rising chest. He nodded before finally looking Sara in the face. “You’re an apothecary? I saw you gathering plants earlier.”

“Yes.” Sara nodded firmly, though her face was rather bloodless.

“Listen to me. I got his heart started again, but that won’t do much for him. The damage to his internal organs is severe. His physical strengthening must have dropped when he hit his head. He was crushed.”

Sara turned even paler. He “got his heart started again”? That meant it had stopped. She’d only ever treated minor injuries before; she’d never even seen anything as bad as this.

“I-I have potions...” Sara reached into her bag, but the man shook his head.

“I don’t think a greater potion will do it, but if you were gathering down here, maybe you have one...” The man gave her a hesitant look. “A supreme potion might do it, but I’d say the odds are fifty-fifty.”

“A supreme potion!” She was here to make that very thing for her exam, but she didn’t have one on her yet. “Nelly! Nelly has one! Chris should too!” But the two of them showed no signs of waking.

“Only a pouch’s owner can produce its contents. It’s too bad, but we’ll just have to give up. It happens all the time in dungeons.”

“Give up...? That’s crazy... You don’t... You don’t have one?” If he’d asked if she had one, then he obviously didn’t himself. Still, she clung to the possibility.

“It’s pointless to carry one if you hunt on your own. If you’re about to die, you’re hardly going to be able to use it yourself.”

With what had just happened, he might have been right.

Sara reached out to Allen, her hands trembling. Was it just her imagination, or was he already breathing more weakly than he was before?

“No way. No way! We can’t just give up.” At the very least, he was still alive now. Sara touched his cheek. “He’s warm. We can still make it.”

Sara leaped to her feet.

“Can you do it?” Kuntz asked, watching all this with bitter frustration in his eyes.

“Yeah.” Sara nodded firmly.

“What can I do?”

“Call out to Nelly. As soon as she wakes up, she’ll be able to use her storage pouch.”

“Got it.”

Her common sense told her that you shouldn’t try to wake someone who was unconscious, but healing worked differently in this world. For now, she wanted Nelly’s help with Allen even if it meant pushing her a little.

Sara stepped back and brought out the long table in her pouch. She quickly got out her potion-making tools and the gathering basket she’d only just put away.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

She had a full audience of gargoyles.

The red-haired man’s eyebrows flew up. “Are those supreme healing herbs?”

“Yes,” Sara said shortly, taking out three herbs and beginning to grind them up. This was a race against time, so she wouldn’t be able to make extra.

“Chris said you make them the same way you do regular potions.”

The familiar process calmed her trembling hands and heart. She had to remain calm or she wouldn’t be able to regulate her mana for the potion. So no matter how worried she was, she couldn’t look toward Allen.

“Nelly! Chris! Wake up!”

She wouldn’t look at Nelly either even as Kuntz called out to them, wondering instead why stimulants weren’t one of their staple medicines. Sara chased the unbidden thought from her mind and concentrated on the task in front of her.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

She wouldn’t look at the gargoyles piling up outside her barrier either.

Eventually the muddy purple color of the concoction shifted to a clear red.

“I think I did it...”

She’d be done as soon as she transferred it to a potion bottle. The liquid was still hot, so Sara slowly cooled it with her magic. She suppressed the desire to dump the whole pot on Allen and poured the clear liquid on top of the solution into a potion bottle.

“It’s done.”

She was careful not to spill it and waste it right at the end. She didn’t panic even when she saw how pale Allen’s face was.

“Should I pour it on him or have him drink it?”

“For internal injuries, drinking it would be better, but...” They couldn’t be sure if he would swallow it if he was unconscious.

The red-haired man lifted Allen up and tilted his head back, opening his mouth. “Guess we’ve got no choice. It’s all or nothing.”

Even if he got some in his lungs, it was better than dying. Sara poured the supreme potion into Allen’s mouth slowly, trying not to let the line of red spilling out of the corner of his mouth bother her.

“Ugh... Guh... Koff!” Allen turned his head away as if to refuse the potion. Even that movement gave Sara hope. She even saw his throat bobbing as he did it. That was proof that he’d swallowed at least some of the potion.

“Do it now! Even if you have to force it!”

“Okay!”

Sara did her best to soothe him as she fed him the rest of the potion.

“Whew... Ugh...”

Laid down once more, Allen was taking deeper breaths now. His cheeks were taking on a bit more color too. Seeing that, the red-haired man wiped the sweat from his brow. He must have been nervous.

“Do you think it worked?” Sara asked him timidly. He looked better than he had before, but she had no confidence in her ability to judge his condition.

“Must have if he’s alive.”

“Huh?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

“I said it was all or nothing, right?”

“Oh yeah, I guess you did. So...?”

“If it didn’t work, he’d be a corpse right about now.”

All or nothing.

In other words, life or death.

“Bweh...” Sara sank to her knees. She had just realized that the supreme potion she’d just made herself might have been the very thing to end Allen’s life for good.

“Thank goodness... Thank goodness, Allen...” Kuntz collapsed beside Sara as well, his voice shaking as he called Allen’s name.

Sara looked up, realizing that Nelly had never opened her eyes even with Kuntz calling out to her. Instead, Chris had woken up and was sitting over Nelly, his hands on her face. He slowly turned her head this way and that and then nodded in relief. He looked shaky himself, though, so he must have only just come to.

Seeing his careful ministrations, Sara relaxed. If Chris had nodded like that, then even if she hadn’t come to yet, Sara was sure Nelly would be fine.

Chris let go of Nelly and wobbled to his feet, so Sara hurriedly moved aside for him. He sat down like Kuntz and put his hands on Allen like he’d done with Nelly, moving him this way and that slowly.

Chris’s thumb slowly wiped the corner of Allen’s mouth. “This red... A supreme potion.”

“Yes. It was the only way...”

“Hmm.” He ran a trembling hand over Allen’s throat, chest, stomach, arms, and legs, then let out a sigh of relief. “He was in real trouble. You did well, Sara.”

“Yes...” She shuddered again hearing Chris say that he was in trouble. She was much happier that Allen would be okay than she was receiving praise from Chris, rare though it was.

“I’d say you’ve passed your graduation exam.”

“Huh?” It took Sara a moment to process what he’d said.

“We were here for your test, right?”

“It’s hardly the time for that!”

Sure, her graduation exam had been gathering plants and crafting a supreme potion, but she could hardly celebrate her success with Nelly still unconscious and Allen having just barely escaped death.

“I don’t care about that right now.”

“Reasonable. But you achieved results. That’s important.”

Even in a situation like this, a couple of dry smiles were all this mentor and student could offer one another.

“That young apothecary must be Neffie’s Invited, then. The gargoyles seem awfully far away for these protection cases you set up.”

Neffie’s Invited. Neffie was the nickname Nelly’s family used for her. Chris looked up at the man and blinked.

“Right, you haven’t been introduced yet.”

She hardly felt like it was the time for introductions with Nelly and Allen still unconscious, but Sara straightened up nonetheless.

“Sara, this is Nef’s second older brother Elm.”

“It’s nice to meet you. Nelly takes really good care of me. I’m Sara, an Invited. Thank you for saving Allen.”

Sara had never heard anything from Nelly about her second older brother except that he was a wandering Hunter. She hadn’t given him much thought either, simply assuming he was a free spirit like the rest of her family.

From how he’d acted today, however, she had nothing but respect for him. Even in all this confusion, he’d saved Nelly and Chris and helped save Allen as well. Sara felt like she owed him a lot already, so she greeted him politely.

“You’re the one who saved the kid, not me. That speedy potion-crafting was impressive.”

Her lips trembled. “No... If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have even realized how bad Allen’s condition was. I probably would have just fed him a greater potion and stopped there. All I did was make the potion.”

She was trying to keep herself together for their introduction, but tears were already spilling out of her eyes. “Allen would have died...”

She was an adult on the inside, and even on the outside, she was already seventeen, she told herself desperately. But it was all for naught.

“Waaah!”

It was hardly the time, but she fell to her hands and knees and wailed inconsolably. It was a rather pathetic end to her graduation exam.

It was hard to say the situation was even resolved. They’d saved Allen’s life and Nelly’s wasn’t in any danger, but both were still unconscious. They couldn’t just stay in the dungeon.

Sara held back her tears, rubbed her eyes roughly with her sleeve, and looked up. Fortunately, no one was looking at her. If she had to guess, it was a conscious decision on their part. Chris was observing Nelly and Allen while Elm and Kuntz were looking toward the collapsed wall.

“I know it’s a bit late to say so, but this really is impressive. This is what an Invited’s protection field is like, eh?”

“Yes. Sara’s protection fields are unbelievably strong and wide-ranging. And she can control them at will too.”

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

They were talking calmly with one another, but Sara’s transparent barrier was right there before their eyes, and gargoyles were writhing against it, stacked up on top of one another. Sara never thought she’d see the face of a gargoyle up close, but it wasn’t like this was the first time monsters were piled up against her barrier. There were the poison bog frogs, the seven-colored swallowtails, and last year, the green grass locusts. In that sense, monsters being at close quarters didn’t really surprise her anymore.

“Wait, that can’t be!”

“Right? I can’t believe it either.”

It wasn’t the gargoyles that Sara and Kuntz were surprised by.

“This is supposed to be the lowest floor in the dungeon.”

“There’s a hole...”

In the wall the gargoyles had tumbled down, there was a gaping hole.

“It looks like a passage down to a lower floor, doesn’t it?” Elm crossed his arms and grinned. Even in their current predicament, he looked genuinely thrilled.

A bit exasperated, Sara nevertheless turned around with a slight grin. “I bet Allen...” He was unconscious now, but if he were standing there with them... “He’d be so excited, he’d race to be the first one down there.”

“Yeah. He’ll be super bummed when he wakes up.”

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

Once he felt better, he’d probably be disappointed and say that he wanted to go explore it himself. Sara was finally able to calm down when she imagined Allen feeling better.

“Well, I’m curious what’s beyond that hole, but there’s no time for that now, unfortunately.” Elm returned to the problem at hand.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

Before she knew it, Sara’s barrier had been completely plastered in gargoyles without a single gap between them. Luckily, however, a few of them were finally starting to peel away, giving up on their prey since it was stubbornly refusing to leave the bubble.

“Anyone down here will be surprised to see gargoyles, but they should realize there’s something abnormal about them and contact the guild.”

“Does that mean we should stay down here for a night until help comes?”

They’d completed their first aid, but if they were going to be staying down here until the next day, Sara wanted to make things a bit more comfortable for her patients.

“I’d be worried about just having protection cases against this many monsters. Will your field hold out a whole night?”

“Yes, but I’m only confident I’d be able to keep it up around myself while I’m sleeping, so I think I’ll have to stay awake all night.” She wanted to make sure her barrier stayed up.

“If we could just move to a safe zone, that’d be better...” Kuntz said, stretching to look toward the hole that had just opened up in the wall.

If the hole led to a new floor, then there would be a safe zone in front of it. When Sara looked over there as well, she did see an area with no gargoyles, but they couldn’t be certain yet, so she would probably just end up keeping her barrier up around everyone else as well.

“Nef will likely wake up later today, but after that supreme potion, Allen may take days to come to, and we can’t stay down here for that whole time,” Chris explained.

It was no wonder Sara had never heard of a supreme potion before, she mused to herself. They might have been potentially life-saving, but it was hard to rely on them when their use was limited by so many factors.

“That said, I wouldn’t want to jostle him too much by carrying him to the surface in someone’s arms or on their back, so it would probably be best to wait until help comes with a stretcher tomorrow.”

When the group started discussing preparations to spend the night, Kuntz raised his hand. “Then I’ll go back now and explain the situation. It’s unlikely anyone would think we were injured even if they knew we were down in the depths.”

Chris blinked in surprise. Evidently, he hadn’t realized that himself. Nelly was strong enough to explore the Dark Mountain on her own and Kuntz and Allen were up-and-coming Hunters strong enough to go down to the deepest floor of the dungeon. With Chris the apothecary and Sara the Invited with them, there would be no reason to worry, since they should have been able to handle anything that came at them.

“So people might come to investigate, but they won’t send a rescue team?”

“Yeah. I doubt anyone’s carrying around a stretcher in their storage pouch on the regular. We maybe could make one, but I’m guessing we’d just be sending whoever shows up tomorrow back for more help. And I don’t know if we could leave Allen and Sara alone here the whole time...”

“But will you be okay by yourself?” She knew it was rude to ask, but physical strengthening wasn’t Kuntz’s specialty. Could he really get through all these gargoyles on his own?

“I’ll go too.”

When Elm raised his hand, Sara was relieved but also a little forlorn.

“I’m not very familiar with Hydrangea’s guild, so it’ll help to have you with me.”

It would probably be faster if Elm went on his own, but he was showing his respect for Kuntz having volunteered.

“Looks like it’d be better to hurry,” he said. When Sara followed his gaze, she noticed that Chris was looking rather pale.

“I’d appreciate it. The sooner the better, to be honest.”

It was rare for Chris to show such weakness.

While Kuntz and Elm began to discuss the trip back, Sara considered what she could do. Chris was keeping an eye on Nelly and Allen, but it looked to her like he was pushing himself, and he could collapse at any moment as well. He had shielded Nelly and borne the full weight of all the gargoyles on top of them. He might have been accomplished in physical strengthening, but he’d suffered an impact that had knocked him unconscious, so of course he wasn’t fine.

Was maintaining a safe area for them really all Sara could do in these circumstances? What would be the ideal solution to their situation? To get all the injured people to the surface as soon as possible, without causing their bodies undue stress on the way, of course.

Sara looked up with a start. She could do that, couldn’t she? How had she just pulled Allen out from under the gargoyles? She’d surrounded him with her barrier and carried him out without disturbing his position. She considered the issue of weight for a moment before quickly shaking her head. If weight were an issue, then she wouldn’t have been able to round up all those seven-colored swallowtails or hold back the wall of gargoyles.

Sara knelt down next to Allen. “That night we looked at the stars was last year, wasn’t it?”

They’d gone stargazing in the middle of that green grass locust hunt, when the end had been nowhere in sight.

“I brought three lights with me that night.” She’d trapped the light magic in her barrier and pulled them along with her as she walked. “Weight doesn’t matter. I can control three barriers.”

Sara stood, her mind made up, and turned to Elm and Kuntz, who looked like they were about to depart any moment. “Let’s all go back together.”

“Sara? What do you mean?” Kuntz asked, taken aback, before frowning. “You have an idea?”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t just Allen. Ever since coming to Hydrangea, Allen and Kuntz had come along on all of her adventures.

“If you say we can do it, then I’ll believe you. What’s your idea?”

His trust in her was more reassuring than anything.

Chris and Elm watched the two of them dubiously but didn’t interject.

“I’ll carry them on stretchers made out of my barrier, like when I pulled Allen out from under the gargoyles earlier.”

Chris opened his mouth for a moment as if to ask if she could really do that, but he quickly shut it again before merely saying, “I’ll leave it to you.”

“Right!”

Sara was rapidly considering the situation. In his current state, she couldn’t imagine Chris could make it up fifteen floors, so she’d have to carry him as well. She’d carried three lights last year, but did she actually have to carry the three of them separately? If she laid them down next to one another and pictured one large stretcher, then she’d only have to transport one big barrier.

“Chris. I’ll carry all three of you together.”

“Me too?” Chris asked in surprise.

“Please lie down next to the two of them. I’ll lift you with my barrier, so could you tell me if it feels uneven or anything?”

“Understood.”

Chris lay down beside Nelly with the most severely injured Allen in between them.

“Here we go.”

Sara formed a barrier around the three of them on the ground. She held her hands out, palms up, to help picture the idea better.

“It’s less like a stretcher and more like a capsule hotel room... Then I connect it to me and lift it up.”

She lifted her hands and the three of them floated upward with the barrier.

“I’ll put it at about waist height so I can see your faces.”

She slowly lowered her hands and took a step back, and the floating trio moved with her.

“I don’t have the courage to look below me, but if you told me I was lying on a hard bed, I’d probably believe you.”

She was grateful for Chris’s calm assessment.

“It’s not tilted or anything?”

“It’s fine. I might just fall asleep, in fact.”

Was she supposed to laugh at that? It was hardly the time for jokes...

The tactful Kuntz gathered up Sara’s protection cases, so there was nothing left on the ground.

“Wait. If your barrier is around the three of them right now, why aren’t the monsters attacking us now that the protection cases are gone?” Elm looked between Kuntz, who had gathered up the protection cases without worrying about their surroundings one bit, and Sara, who was just standing there silently. He was keeping his stance low, obviously prepared to face off against monsters at a moment’s notice.

It must have been hard for him to watch the proceedings silently, since he didn’t know what Sara was capable of. She appreciated his holding off on asking questions until now, at least.

“You can make your barrier with two layers, right, Sara?” Kuntz answered on Sara’s behalf.

“Right. So let’s go as fast as we can, without worrying about monsters.”

“You can do that...?”

As Elm goggled, Kuntz gave him swift instructions. “I’ll lead, since I know the way well. Can you take the rear, Elm?”

“...Got it.”

Sara asked Kuntz to go slow at first and made sure the barrier capsule behind her was following her. It would make her nervous to see them the whole time, so she just concentrated on keeping it level with the ground.

“Mana will empower you in whatever way you imagine. Keep your mana level in mind and don’t push yourself as you picture the magic you want to cast.” She quietly intoned the very first words in her magic textbook.

“Whatever way you imagine...” For some reason, Kuntz repeated her words in front of her. But there was no time to ask why.

“I’m ready,” she announced.

“Okay, let’s go, then.”

Kuntz started out slow, checking behind him to make sure Sara could keep up, and eventually they were traveling at top speed. If something was wrong with the injured trio’s accommodations, Chris would surely speak up.

Kuntz finally stopped once they were in the safe area upon entering the twelfth floor.

“Sara, you okay?”

“Yeah.”

It was tiring maintaining an unusual barrier setup like this, but she wasn’t panting like she’d been on their way down.

“How’s everyone else?”

She turned around to check on the injured and ran toward them, but since she’d set her barrier to follow her at a certain distance, the stretcher fled from her when she moved.

“Calm down, Sara... Pull the barrier close...” She tugged the barrier to her like it was on a string and peered down, letting out a relieved sigh. “Oh, Chris...”

Nelly and Allen were still unconscious; Chris had fallen asleep and was dozing comfortably beside them.

“It’s almost annoying how comfortable he looks, but at least his color’s better than it was when he was pushing himself earlier. I guess it’s best he gets some rest for now.”

“He fell asleep almost as soon as we started moving. I see Chris is as practical and thick-skinned as he’s always been. Probably thought that if there was nothing he could do then he should get some rest while he could. I doubt I’d be able to relax enough to sleep on an invisible bed.”

“Oh, right.” Sara spread her arms out like a witch. “Let me change the bottom half of the barrier to frosted glass.” The bottom of her barrier swiftly shifted to a semitransparent, cloudy slab.

“You can do anything with that thing, huh?” Elm smiled wryly, but Sara was impressed at his ability to roll with it as well.

She felt like she’d recovered a bit of her energy from that lighthearted discussion.

“Okay, Sara, let’s go as far as we can at this pace now. Just say when you need to stop and we’ll stop, okay? Elm, if it looks like she’s struggling, please speak up.”

“Got it.”

They raced straight to the dungeon’s entrance after that with just one break on the way. Sara was surprised to find that evening was just starting on the surface, so there were still Hunters in the shallow parts of the dungeon. Some of the Hunters who had noticed the abnormal state of the group went back to the guild before them and notified them of their arrival, so by the time they got to the entrance of the dungeon, there was a rescue squad waiting for them with stretchers.

“Kuntz! Sara!”

Someone must have delivered the news to the lord’s mansion as well. At the head of the rescue party was Ri. Thed was beside him as well, and he was about to call out to Sara when he noticed the person at the back of the group and opened his eyes wide.

“Is that you, Elm?”

“We’ll talk later, Thed.” Elm shook his head.

Ri seemed to bottle up something he wanted to say as well, turning his attention to the group on the barrier stretcher instead.

“My goodness!” Caren pushed through the group to come to the front. She must have come when she heard there were injured.

“Everyone, please listen for a moment.” Kuntz spoke up, a bastion of calm amid the chaos. “The wall in the depths of the dungeon on the fifteenth floor that the continental tortoise emerged from has collapsed.”

It was no time to be worrying about a graduation test or anything like that.

“When it did, Elm, Nelly, Chris, and Allen were buried in the rubble. Elm managed to escape on his own.”

The crowd listened silently to Kuntz’s explanation.

“Chris woke up quickly, but he’s resting now to recover. Nelly is still unconscious. Allen...” Kuntz’s voice trembled slightly. “Allen almost died, but Sara managed to save him with a supreme potion. And...” He turned to Sara and continued his report. “Sara carried them back with us on a stretcher she made with her barrier.”

“Then...!” Ri raised his hand to interject, but Kuntz stopped him. He was usually very reserved, but he was being very bold right now.

“I’d like to get them somewhere comfortable quickly, but we have one more thing to report.” He looked to Elm. All he had to report was one more thing, but he must have wanted to ask his senior Hunter to handle it.

Elm nodded. “I’m Elm Wolverié. I just happened to be in the depths of the dungeon when the collapse happened. The wall the continental tortoise emerged from had become a horde of gargoyles, and when they collapsed, they left behind a large hole. The hole looks exactly like a passage to another floor of the dungeon.”

“Is that even possible...?”

Thed was the only one able to even respond to this news, which was probably a sign of just how impressive he was. The news was so unexpected that time seemed to stop for a moment until Caren clapped her hands together.

“I’ll look after the injured. Ri, can we borrow your mansion?”

“Of course. The stretchers!”

The people carrying the stretchers hurried to the front, but Sara stopped them.

“Wait. I’ll carry them to the mansion like this.” To be honest, she was exhausted, and wanted to fall to her knees right that second, but she would just have to power through. “They’ll be more stable inside my barrier. I can make it to the mansion.”

“Very well. Please do so, then. Can you tell me their conditions as we walk?”

“Yes.”

Sara began walking beside Caren, pulling the barrier stretcher behind her.

“Sara, I’ll head to the mansion once I’m finished up here,” Kuntz told her. Ri, Thed, and Elm were staying as well, but Sara didn’t feel abandoned by them.

“We’ll walk you there.”

“We’ll come too.”

Some Hunters who knew Allen and some of her apothecary colleagues surrounded the barrier almost like they were the ones carrying the stretcher. It was common knowledge that Sara was an Invited, but not too many people knew about the unique magic she was able to use. It was sure to cause a commotion in town if she walked through with injured people floating behind her. She was sure they were worried about Chris, Allen, and Nelly, but their consideration for her as well gave her the strength to keep up the effort for a little longer.

“So what happened? I mean, I got the gist from what Kuntz said, but Sara, if you had to use a supreme potion, are you really all right?”

“Yes, umm... No, I’m not, really.” Sara choked a bit, not expecting the simple question to affect her so much. Caren understood just how difficult the decision to use a supreme potion was.

“Making the potion is simple enough. The herbs differ, but the process is the same as making a normal healing potion. But you only use one when someone is on the brink of death, and the potion itself could end up tipping the patient’s condition past the point of no return, so it’s not an easy decision to make.” Caren’s explanation was likely for the benefit of the apothecaries following behind them. “You used one on Allen,” she said simply.

“Yes. But if Elm hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have even known to use one, so I wouldn’t have been able to treat Allen anyway. So I don’t regret it.”

“I see.”

For a time, they hurried to the mansion in silence.

“I’ve used supreme potions a few times in the past myself. Not on myself, of course. I was with the knights at the time.”

“The knights? Was it for migrating dragons?”

“That’s right. There were more of them than usual that year. In fact, that year might be the reason they take it so seriously now. There were knights I saved with supreme potions and ones whose death I hastened with them. Even now, I’m still not sure whether I should have used those potions or not.”

Chris had told her that Caren had experience using supreme potions. Of course, at the time, there was no way for Sara to know how much pain using those potions had caused her.

“You made the right decision,” said a voice from behind them.

“Master Chris! Are you all right?!” Caren ran back to him, so Sara stopped for a moment. Fortunately, they’d already made it through town and had almost arrived at Ri’s mansion.

The sight of Chris floating in space, looking up at the sky was so odd, it would normally have made her laugh. Right now, however, she was more happy that he’d opened his eyes again than anything else.

“Sara, please keep walking. It’s a pretty comfortable ride.”

“Okay.”

They were almost at the mansion. If they could get some rest in a bed, that would definitely be better. Sara was relieved that he sounded just like he always did.

“Master Chris.”

“I hear you showed Sara some supreme healing herbs. That was a great help.”

“It wasn’t all that much, really.”

“Thanks to you, she was able to gather the plants and create the potion all on her own in the dungeon without any help from me. Sara has passed her graduation test with flying colors.”

Sara wanted to make a comment about that being the first thing out of his mouth after waking up, but she held herself back.

“I knew she would. Hydrangea’s apothecaries are all talented. It’s not just Sara; I’m sure everyone else will pass as well.”

“You’re right about that. Sara gathered plenty of herbs, so there should be enough for everyone.”

Wasn’t this a bit lighthearted for the current situation? At least the apothecaries who had come with them seemed pleased.

“Of course, it would be best if you never had the opportunity to use a supreme potion at all, but when it happens, it happens. If you’re in the position of having to consider whether or not to use one, you should use it.”

Chris spoke not just to Sara but to Caren and the other apothecaries as well.

“No one wants to make a judgment call that could result in someone’s death, but a true apothecary is able to bear the weight of that decision.”

“Master Chris... Thank you,” Caren said somewhat tearily.

“Incidentally, I was being transported like I was seriously injured, but I was merely sleeping. I feel very refreshed after that.”

A laugh went through the group at that. He spoke like he’d merely been sleep-deprived and was now feeling better. Chris had lost consciousness as well, so he was an injured person, but maybe a laugh was what everyone needed most right now.

“Caren, I’d like you to give Allen a look when we arrive at the mansion. His internal organs were very badly damaged. His recovery may take a while.”

“I understand.”

Once they made it to the mansion, it was decided that Caren and the other apothecaries would take shifts watching over Nelly and Allen, and Sara was swiftly chased off to get some rest. Not even having the energy to take a bath, Sara collapsed into bed without dinner and slept soundly until the next morning. She didn’t even notice when Ri made it back.

“Hwaaah... I slept well.”

Sara always awoke feeling very refreshed since coming to this world.

“Morning, Sara.”

“Waugh!”

She was supposed to be in a different room now, but Nelly was sitting comfortably beside Sara’s bed, drinking some tea.

Sara had all sorts of comments she wanted to make, but her surprise could wait.

“Morning! Are you okay being up like this, Nelly?”

She’d been carried unconscious in a stretcher just the day before, after all. Chris had said she was likely to wake up soon, but shouldn’t she spend a few days resting after all that?

“Maybe it’s because I slept so much, but I’m feeling even better than usual, actually.”

Sara almost laughed and told her she was just like her husband, but she had to say what she had to say.

“No! I’m worried about you, so I want you to rest.”

“Ha ha ha. Yeah, I guess you’re right.” At least she listened to Sara’s requests without arguing. “Those gargoyles were just too heavy. If I’d been able to avoid them, we could have been eating roast gargoyle right about now...”

“It’s good, isn’t it?” It was almost enough for her to start drooling just remembering it. “Oh yeah! Allen!” This was no time for her appetite to be getting the better of her. Nelly had recovered. Next was Allen.

“I just looked in on him myself. Don’t think he’s gonna wake up anytime soon.”

“I’m still gonna go see him.” Sara hurried to change and headed for Allen’s guest room. He always stayed in the same room whenever he slept over at the mansion.

She’d arrived at the door and was wondering whether to knock when it opened from inside and Caren emerged carrying a tray.

“Caren.”

“Oh, Sara. Good morning. Allen’s condition hasn’t changed.”

There was an empty potion bottle and a cup on the tray.

“He was able to drink a potion and some water, though. Hmm... Yes, come inside for a moment.” Caren invited her in and offered her a chair beside Allen’s bed.

“He’s a lot less pale than he was yesterday...” Sara was relieved to see his chest slowly rising up and down. It looked as if he were merely fast asleep.

“Yes. I think it was good that you were able to transport him without jostling him. It was like you were able to get him into a bed right away after he was injured. It’s all thanks to you, the supreme potion included.”

“I’m glad.”

If she denied her involvement in his recovery, she was likely to question her use of the potion again like she had the day before. Sara had made a supreme potion and given it to Allen on her own judgment. Chris had taught her not to regret making weighty decisions as an apothecary, hadn’t he?

“Things will be a little difficult from here, though.”

“Will there be complications?”

It was Sara’s understanding that serious injuries took time to heal.

“I don’t think so. His arms and legs are responding normally.”

So that was why Chris had checked his arms and legs so thoroughly. Sara had never examined a patient so thoroughly before. All of a sudden, she found herself wondering about Ted. He’d worked as an apothecary in Camellia and in the capital as well. Was Sara satisfied with her current level when she was really nothing more than a third-rate apothecary?

“You understand that a supreme potion is a difficult item to use and that it’s only given to a person who’s on the brink of death, right?”

“Yes.”

“I was going to teach everyone about what happens after their use after they’d crafted the potion themselves. I didn’t think someone would end up using one right after making it.”

What happens after. In other words, what happens now for Allen. Sara sat up straight to pay attention properly.

“After using a supreme potion, if the patient wants to recover fully, they’ll need to take a certain amount of potion three times a day for about a month without exerting themselves any more than they would in their daily life.”

“Err...” Sara had been braced for terrible side effects, but she wasn’t sure how to respond now. It was the same way a person would recuperate from any slightly serious illness.

“Heh heh,” Caren giggled seeing Sara’s reaction. “Yeah, it wouldn’t pose any problems for a person with a regular job.”

“A regular job... Oh.” Sara finally caught on.

“Right. You can guess what sort of people end up needing to use supreme potions, right?”

“Yes. Hunters or knights.”

“Exactly.”

People whose work involved training their bodies. People who would push themselves right away if they were told “don’t train” or “don’t hunt.”

“Yeah, Allen seems like he’d want to get right back into training...”

“Hunters are all like that. But if they push themselves in that month, they may not be able to get back to their past strength. How should I put it... They might end up with a smaller reserve of strength afterward. No matter how much they train after that, they won’t be able to get as strong as they were before.”

“That can happen?”

“It’s said to happen because a supreme potion forcibly calls on the body’s reserves of vitality. You need to be careful after that until your normal reserves have recovered.”

Frankly speaking, Sara had been expecting her graduation exam to be a more lighthearted affair with a simple jaunt into the depths of the dungeon. Part of her wished she’d heard all this information about supreme potions before this whole ordeal, but another part of her was sure that if she had all the information, she would have been even more hesitant to use one.

“For you and me, it might not seem like it matters much whether they can get back to their full strength or not if it means they’ll survive, but Hunters and knights don’t usually think that way. When someone like that trains and trains and never gets back to their old strength, the frustration eats away at them. It turns to impatience and they end up throwing their lives away out of overeagerness. It really is a difficult drug to use, so it’s hard to even get the experience using it as an apothecary.”

“Yeah...”

Sara was determined to convince Allen not to push himself when he woke up. He recovered steadily and finally opened his eyes the next day, two days after his injury had occurred.

Kuntz was one of his first visitors, of course, and he brought clothes and other necessities from Allen’s usual lodging place along with news from the Hunter’s Guild.

The Hunter’s Guild’s greatest concern was not that Nelly and Allen had been injured but that the wall in the deepest floor had collapsed, revealing what looked like a passageway to a new floor. They wanted to investigate right away, but the vice guildmaster Nelly was resting, and the primary apothecary who would accompany such a mission, Chris, was resting as well. Not to mention there was the massive outbreak of gargoyles on the lowest floor. Before any investigation, they would have to take care of the gargoyles, so the guild was a mess of activity right now.

“I thought you would be right back at the guild on the next day, Nelly. I can’t believe you’ve taken two whole days off now.”

In addition to Nelly and Chris, Elm had joined them at the breakfast table. Maybe it was because he was family, but he sat there after the meal drinking tea as though he had always been there, which amused Sara.

“Ha ha ha. You know me well, Sara. I might have done exactly that in the past.”

“Your priorities really do change when you get married,” Sara couldn’t help commenting.

But Nelly’s face was serious when she responded. “It’s not that. When I was on my own on the Dark Mountain, the tiniest injury could be life-threatening, so I was just about as careful as you can be. I actually got a lot more careless after I started traveling with you, since I always had people around me to rely on.”

“Then you got injured because...” Sara started, despondent. Had Sara’s presence caused her to miss a danger that she would have otherwise noticed?

“No, this time it was because I let my guard down after running into Elm.”

“So it’s my fault?”

They were talking about someone getting injured, but the whole table was smiling. What was Sara supposed to do with her despondency, exactly?

“So taking time to recover properly after an injury is what I would usually do, Sara,” Nelly said with a look of pride that made Sara have a fit of giggles.

“That’s not true, Sara. It’s because I told her not to push herself and worry you.”

“Shut up, Chris.”

It was an exchange that it was hard to imagine was coming from a pair of newlyweds, but it was just like the two of them.

Nelly had snapped at Chris, but she smiled when she saw the grin on Sara’s face. “The truth is that I’d like to be in the dungeon right now. Of course I want to see the hole in the lowest floor for myself.”

“Yeah, I thought so. You’re a Hunter through and through, Nelly.”

“Same goes for me. I’m curious what happened after we left.”

When Elm raised his hand...

“I feel the same way. I’m worried the gargoyles have trampled all the medicinal plants down there.”

...Chris raised his as well.

“I know. Let’s just go and hunt some gargoyles for a bit. We can have the cooks make us roast gargoyle.”

“Wait, wait, wait. How many times do I need to tell you, Nef?”

That was when it happened. There was a hurried knock on the door before the apothecary keeping watch over Allen poked a head in through the door.

“He’s awake. He doesn’t seem unwell at all, but would you mind taking a look at him, Master Chris?”

Here was another Chris fanatic. Sara agreed, though. He’d been treated with a supreme potion, so it made sense to make sure he was fine.

Sara ran over to Allen’s room without waiting for Chris to accompany her.

“Allen!”

Allen was sitting in bed, staring dazedly out the window.

“Sara.”

Sara ran over to him and took his face in her hands, checking his complexion carefully. Other than the miserable look on his face, he seemed perfectly fine.

“Thank goodness... Thank goodness...”

Sara sank into the chair beside the bed. She’d already cried a frankly embarrassing amount in the dungeon, so no tears came to her eyes now. She was glad she didn’t have to show Allen such a pathetic sight.

“What have you heard?” Sara asked him.

Allen shook his head. “Just that I should ask the people who were there with me what happened. All I remember is a bunch of gargoyles falling on me.” Allen touched the back of his head and then looked down.

“Umm, maybe I should wait for Chris and Elm to get here before saying anything.”

“Elm. Oh yeah, I remembered hearing that Nelly really respected her other brother who was a Hunter, so I really wanted to meet him.”

Which was why the group of them had been chatting so animatedly together. Sara nodded to herself.

“Sara.”

“Hmm?”

That might have been the first time she had met Allen’s eyes after entering the room.

“Were you okay, Sara?”

“Yeah. I was apart from the group, and Kuntz pulled me away, so I didn’t get caught up in it.”

“He did? Then Kuntz must be fine too.”

“Uh-huh. Nelly and Chris were buried too, but they recovered before you.” Sara figured he could hear the rest from them himself, but Allen hung his head then.

“I wasn’t able to protect you, Sara.”

“Hmm? But you didn’t need to protect me. I was far away from the gargoyles, and I have my barrier.”

Allen always casually accompanied Sara, but she thought of it more as emotional support. From her perspective, Allen wasn’t really physically protecting her. She wanted to tell him not to worry about her and focus on recovering, but Allen started to mutter something glumly.

“Allen!”

It wasn’t Nelly or Chris who burst through the door but Kuntz, who should have returned to his regular lodging house by now. As soon as he entered the room, he raced over to Allen, practically jumping onto the bed.

“What the hell?! How could you get hurt like that?! Do you know how much I worried about you?!”

Kuntz had been so levelheaded during the whole ordeal, but his voice was shaking now as if he might cry.

“I’m sorry. Really. I let my guard down.”

“Don’t let your guard down on the lowest floor of the dungeon! You can’t get so full of yourself just ’cause you’re a little strong!”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Apologize to Sara! She was the one who went through the most!”

Sara leaped up. She’d let her guard down admiring their friendship.

“...I’m sorry, Sara.”

“It’s fine. I’m okay.” Sara waved her hands in front of her face. She didn’t like being the center of attention.

“Allen! Are you okay?”

Eventually, Nelly, Chris, and Elm arrived as well and the Wolverié mansion’s spacious guest room suddenly started to feel a little cramped. Incidentally, Ri wasn’t present, since he’d been at the guild since early morning in his capacity as the local lord.

As Allen heard about the situation from all the adults in turn, just as Sara expected, he was less interested in his own injury and more interested in the hole under the gargoyle wall. However, when he heard that he’d have to take it easy for a month and then only after training once his stamina recovered would he be able to return to work, his expression turned to one of despair.

“You should let Sara treat you for this month so she can learn how a patient recovers after taking a supreme potion.”

Ignoring his despair, Chris left the room after telling him that. When Nelly and Elm left as well, Sara and Kuntz were the only ones who remained.

“Allen...”

He’d only just regained consciousness and had heard about how he was on the brink of death, how Sara had saved him with a supreme potion, how she’d carried him on a stretcher while he was unconscious, and how he’d need time to recover now, so he couldn’t do whatever he wanted for the next month. His head was probably spinning with all of it. Still, Sara at least wanted to tell him what Caren had told her.

“I want you to listen to me.”

Allen turned to her. His eyes were dark, but at least he was listening to her.

“I need to tell you the reason you have to take it easy for a month.”

“It’s just something about not pushing myself, right?”

His petulant tone was only natural. Sara didn’t let it bother her and went on.

“Supreme potions use your vitality to save your life. You need to take a month to recover your vitality, but it’s not something that you can see.”

“My vitality? I’ve never heard anything about that before.”

“I didn’t know about it until Caren told me either.”

At least he was listening. That was good.

“You can move around even without waiting a month, but if you push yourself now, your vitality won’t recover and it will get stuck where it’s at now.”

Allen frowned, not understanding. She didn’t think she’d explained it well, so she searched for a better way to say it.

“So, if you push yourself, then later, no matter how much you train, you’ll never get back the strength you had before.”

“So I’ll get weaker and I’ll be stuck like that.”

“Right.”

This was important for a Hunter who wanted to be strong. Sara waited for the information to fully sink in.

“So, I...” Allen started slowly, “need to wait a month for my vitality to recover without getting impatient.”

“Yeah.”

“This sucks...”

Allen looked up at the ceiling, resignation in his eyes. But Allen had always been a lot more mature than Sara, and he didn’t look as grim as he had before.

“I got it, Sara. I’ll do my best to...not do my best.”

“Yeah. We’ll do our best together.”

“Me too.” Kuntz grinned, listening to the side.

The three of them had been together for some time now, and things would be different for a little while, but Sara was relieved that it looked like they’d be okay.

Nelly and Chris rested one more day just to be safe. Sara thought if you had boulders fall on you and knock you unconscious, you should take something like two weeks off, but the two of them were nothing if not hardy. It gave her a complicated feeling somewhere between admiration and exasperation. But if the greatest apothecary in the land, who treasured Nelly above all else, gave his okay for her to go back to work, she’d probably be fine.

With the vice guildmaster back, they would finally be able to investigate the depths of the dungeon.

As for Sara, since she’d made a round trip fifteen floors down into the dungeon and back in one day, she’d gotten permission to take the same amount of time off as Nelly. She’d given the supreme healing herbs to Caren already of course, and she’d heard the happy news that everyone at the Apothecary’s Guild had succeeded in crafting a supreme potion, so that was a weight off her shoulders.

Kuntz had started visiting Allen in the morning before heading to the guild and then again at night when he got back.

Sara spent her days with Allen, who nodded off frequently as if not fully recovered yet, and considered what she should do next. She made him drink potions Chris had provided her with every morning, noon, and night. Of course, he could drink them himself, so she just watched as he did so.

Still, Sara had only been given three days off. It wasn’t as if she could be with Allen for the entire month. Allen probably wouldn’t want that either. Tomorrow, she’d have to go back to the Apothecary’s Guild.

After eating lunch and watching Allen drink a potion with a grimace on his face, Sara was relieved to watch him drift off to sleep and headed out to the lake for a change of pace. If she went to the guild, her colleagues would likely thank her for the herbs and tell her all about their successful potion-brewing. Then she’d just spend her day making potions like she always did.

Maybe she’d be called to the depths of the dungeon to help out every so often or Chris would invite her to investigate some plants. When she went back to the mansion, Nelly, Chris, and Elm would be there, and maybe she’d be able to hear about some places in Trilgaia she hadn’t yet visited. She’d probably be having fun days just like she always did, with the only difference being that Allen wasn’t doing well. Sara wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

She passed by the building where the southern knights were training and went down the little path in the back that led to the lake. There was still a cold spring wind blowing over the lake, but it felt comfortable to Sara. She knelt down to pick up a stone when she noticed a familiar plant.

“I think Chris told me this plant grows near water and it’s not very effective for medicine, but you can use it in food...” She thought back to Gardenia the year before. “We gathered so much on the way there and back and he told me about a bunch of plants I’d never seen before.”

A little ways away from the plant she’d just spotted were some healing herbs, the regular kind that were in her guidebook.

“I always spot healing herbs right away, and when I take a break, I start wanting to make potions again right away. When I pass by the knights, I always wonder if anyone’s hurt...” Doing a little self-analysis, she realized she’d really become an apothecary.

“I’m guessing I’ve had more unique experiences than anyone else in Hydrangea’s Apothecary’s Guild, and I have more than enough mana to do the job.”

Hydrangea had a dungeon, but its monsters weren’t as tough as the ones in Rosa or on the Dark Mountain. The Hunters here weren’t the type to push themselves recklessly, so there weren’t often people brought into the guild with injuries. That was why the apothecaries of Hydrangea were generally easygoing and good-natured. Of course, they had ambition and drive as well, which was why they were so gung ho about making antiparalytics from mushrooms and dragon repellent from silver dragonmint.

“But how do I measure up to other towns’ apothecaries, like Ted?”

She picked up a small stone at the plant’s roots and tossed it into the lake. There was a soft plunk and ripples spread out over the water.

When Sara had collapsed from the dragon’s roar in the capital, it was Ted who had examined her. At the time, her surprise had won out over anything else, but now that she’d seen Allen on the brink of death, she could tell. Ted had examined people with bad injuries before.

In Rosa, she’d just thought of him as someone who tended the shop and ran errands, but now that she thought about it, he’d tended to the knights’ injuries like he was used to it. In a place like Rosa, he’d likely treated injuries many times. That was why he was able to treat Sara so confidently.

Chris had been not only the pinnacle of apothecaries—the guildmaster in the capital—but the guildmaster in Rosa as well. There were several dungeons near the capital and they had migrating dragons and knights as well. He’d probably gotten a ton of experience there.

“But it’s not like everyone in the capital is an amazing apothecary. There were plenty of people there who don’t hold a candle to Hydrangea’s apothecaries.”

They were young nobles, she was pretty sure, who only did easy work and tried to undermine other people at the guild.

“Am I going to just go back to my usual life as an apothecary, getting wrapped up in stuff because of Chris or someone else?”

Allen had almost died. She’d saved his life by making a supreme potion on the spot. She’d carried the injured out of the depths of the dungeon with her barrier. Everything Sara had done was worthy of praise, and she was sure she’d receive some as soon as she went back into town.

“But I’ve just been regretting it this whole time...”

She regretted never being able to adjust her barrier except for right when she needed to, and realizing that being an apothecary wasn’t just making potions but not putting in any effort to learn more. She never did anything until people told her to.

“I’m not in any pain and I can do whatever I want without getting tired, so I was satisfied just living a normal life. I don’t want to stand out or be a hero or anything, so I just wanted to be an apothecary who can use a little magic.”

She wanted to be a fun person, a gentle soul who didn’t like conflict but could crack a joke. That was what Sarasa had been like, and she hadn’t changed since becoming Sara.

“But this is Trilgaia, and there are monsters here. If I’m working as an apothecary who mainly heals Hunters, then I can’t just have a normal life.”

Especially if everyone around her was so far removed from normal themselves.

“I’m not good enough the way I am now. If I want to walk beside everyone, then I need to get stronger.”

The ripples on the lake had long since faded and Sara’s internal clock was telling her that it was already time for an afternoon snack.

“A graduation exam? Yeah right... I’ve only just arrived at the door to being an apothecary.”

Sara stood and looked out at the lake as it reflected the light from the sun.

“I need to figure out what kind of apothecary I want to be and what I need to do to make that happen.”

She turned her back to the lake and walked off toward the mansion. For now, she could think about it after her snack.

Chapter 2: Hearts Adrift

Sara knocked on Allen’s door, pushing a cart with snacks on it. If she were a legitimate daughter of House Wolverié, she probably would have gotten funny looks acting like a servant; it was precisely because she was only an Invited under the family’s care that she could get away with doing whatever she wanted. The servants respected her desire to take care of Allen herself, even if their attitudes made it clear that they would prefer if she didn’t.

“I brought some snacks, Allen.”

“Snacks, eh? Can’t say we really get snacks in the dungeon...”

Sara couldn’t hide her surprise as Allen made a disgruntled face at the word “snacks.”

“Huh? You don’t get hungry in there?” Whenever she went into a dungeon with them, she always got out snacks because she wanted to eat them, but she didn’t know that he normally didn’t have them.

“I’ll eat some bread or dried meat if I get hungry.”

“How Hunter-like.”

She supposed the kind of snacks she ate wouldn’t fill the belly of a growing Hunter.

Allen watched Sara set out the snacks with some amusement. He looked a lot healthier than he had before, but there was a trace of melancholy in his expression.

“Do you still feel bad?”

“No, not anymore. It just doesn’t agree with me to lie around like this all day.”

They were hardly the words of someone who had been on the verge of death a mere three days ago. Sara was very glad Caren had told her about Hunters overworking themselves during their recovery periods.

“You remember what I told you yesterday, right?”

“Yeah. If I push myself, my vitality won’t recover and my growth will stop.”

Simply speaking, that was exactly it.

“I’ll be going back to the Apothecary’s Guild tomorrow. I’m worried you’ll push yourself when I’m not around, Allen.”

“I’m not a kid. I’ll do what you told me to. It’s for my own sake and all.”

Still, if he was already bored just one day after waking up, there was sure to be trouble in the future. However, though Chris and Caren had both told him not to push himself, neither of them had said anything about staying in bed the whole time. Sara could remember grumbling to herself back in Japan when relatives of hers had undergone surgery or friends had given birth and they were walking around right afterward. She’d assumed they needed to rest for longer after things like that.

Maybe instead of just watching over his recovery, they should make some sort of plan for how it should go. Sara decided to get some specifics on what exactly it was he could and couldn’t do. Of course, the only people she could ask were Caren and Chris.

She finished her snacks quickly and headed straight for the Apothecary’s Guild. Since Chris and Nelly were still technically recuperating from their own injuries, she decided it would be best to go to Caren with her questions. Sara opened the door to the Apothecary’s Guild cheerfully, thinking about how it would have been ridiculous to show up at her workplace on a day off back in Japan.

“Hello! It’s Sara,” she called. “Is Caren around?”

“Sara! Is everything okay?”

They were worried for her even though they knew she was only taking the day off to get some rest, and just as she expected, she received plenty of thanks for the supreme healing herbs. Everyone wanted to talk about making the potions.

One of them finally remembered what Sara had asked and hurried to go and get Caren.

“Oh? I thought you were taking the day off. You here to work?”

“No.” Sara was determined to enjoy her day off to the fullest, so she declined straightaway. “I came to get more details on the recovery period after taking a supreme potion.”

“The recovery period? I told you it was enough to go about daily life without pushing yourself, right?”

“Yes.” Sara nodded and explained, “I’m sure that’s enough for most people, but I wanted to know exactly what Hunters and knights, people who do physical labor, should and shouldn’t do.”

“I see.”

“Back where I used to live, we had exercises and things you were supposed to do to get back to your usual routine quicker instead of just resting all the time. So I was wondering how a Hunter could spend a month keeping their physical activity level as high as possible without pushing themselves.”

“For Allen, eh?” Caren said with a bit of a tender tone, but Sara didn’t get embarrassed.

“That’s part of it, but I always seem to have people like Allen and Nelly, who go deep into dungeons, around me, so I figure I might have to use supreme potions again in the future as well. If that happens, I’d like to be able to use them without second-guessing myself, and I want to be able to help with the recovery process afterward too.”

Sara’s first thought was this: If Allen was able to get his strength back little by little with physical therapy, then he would be less likely to push himself.

“Can he swing a sword or work out? How much can he use physical strengthening?”

“Hmm... I’m not sure of that myself.” It seemed it wasn’t something Caren had concrete information on. “Asking someone who’s experienced it would be best, but I wonder if there’s even anyone like that in Hydrangea...”

Most Hunters didn’t stay in one dungeon forever. They moved around. And there was no reason for an apothecary to be familiar with all the Hunters in town and their individual histories.

Sara stood up. “I’ll go to the Hunter’s Guild and ask the guildmaster, then. I’ll have to come back later if he’s busy, though.”

“You probably know more people there than me. You’ll let me know too if you find anything out, right?”

“Of course.”

The place was soon to be crowded with Hunters returning from the dungeon, and with the news of a hole in the lowest floor of the dungeon spreading around, the guildmaster might be too busy to answer Sara’s questions at the moment, but he could just tell her if that was the case.

Sara hurried to the Hunter’s Guild next. Just as she expected, it was starting to get lively with returning Hunters, but it didn’t seem any different than it usually was. Some people she was familiar with asked after Allen’s and Nelly’s health, but that was all.

She went up to an open receptionist and asked, “Umm, is the guildmaster in?”

“Oh, how’s Nelly doing? Is she okay?” The receptionist was her usual self.

“She’s fine. Chris told her to take it easy just in case.”

“I can just picture that.” The receptionist giggled and stood from her chair, beckoning Sara. “He can’t do anything until Nelly and Chris show up, so he’s got nothing but free time at the moment. He could probably use someone to talk to—if you wouldn’t mind.”

Zachary, who had been a colleague of Nelly’s back when she was a knight, was the current guildmaster, but the position was easy enough in Hydrangea that someone could be away from the town most of the time and the guild could still function just fine, if the recent history was any indication. Nelly had only become vice guildmaster because she was confident “nothing too annoying happens around here.”

Of course, from Sara’s perspective, there were mass monster outbreaks, rare herb discoveries, continental tortoises popping out... This was a Hunter’s Guild with nothing but annoying troubles. That being said, she respected the man in charge of it, Zachary. She was doubly impressed by his ability to run things smoothly given that Nelly and Chris could be a bit odd, even if they were talented, but that was a secret she would take to her grave.

“Zachary! Sara’s here to visit.”

“Let her in! What about Allen? How’s Nefertari doing?”

When the receptionist knocked on the door and opened it, Zachary was leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, but he jumped up when he spotted Sara. He really must have had nothing to do.

“Nelly’s completely fine, but Allen’s still resting.”

“I see...”

She was happy that he’d asked about Allen straightaway, even if it was only because he knew that Nelly would be coming in herself tomorrow.

“Well, take a seat.”

Sara hadn’t told him what she was here for yet, but it seemed he’d have plenty of time to talk.

“Not too often you come here on your own. First things first, I want to thank you for bringing those Hunters back up from the depths.”

“Well, I am technically a Hunter myself.” Sara rooted around for her Hunter card in her pouch and took it out. It was the first form of ID she’d secured for herself, but it had been a while since she’d shown it to anyone.

“Come to think of it, you are, aren’t you? I forgot I used to think you could make the strongest party ever if you teamed up with Allen and Kuntz. Must have been back during the seven-colored swallowtail thing.”

Sara knew that Allen hadn’t given up on that either.

“But after seeing how brilliant you are as an apothecary, we can’t just snatch you up and make you a Hunter. I can’t believe you whipped up a supreme potion and used it right on the spot.”

She was of course happy to be called a “brilliant apothecary,” but Zachary frowned a moment later.

“Hard to even describe how listless you feel after taking a supreme potion. And the apothecaries all tell you not to move around even though you’re already better... Oh, sorry.”

Sara blinked in surprise, then leaned forward. “No, that’s exactly what I wanted to ask about!”

“What? About supreme potions?”

“Yeah.” Sara told him how she was thinking about what sort of physical therapy Allen could do to get better. “I wanted to hear from someone who’d taken a supreme potion before what it means for your vitality not to recover.”

“In that case... Okay. Gimme a minute.” Zachary stood and lumbered out of the guildmaster’s office.

“Huh? Are there more people who have taken one?”

Zachary returned with three Hunters in tow. They were all veterans that Sara knew by face if not by name.

“Hey, haven’t seen you since Gardenia.” One was a Hunter who had accompanied them on the expedition last year.

“So, you wanted to know about how it feels after taking a supreme potion?”

“Yes. I want to know what you should do in the recovery period. I don’t have a good idea of what Caren and Chris mean when they say you can go about your daily life as long as you don’t push yourself.”

“Right...”

The trio were of a similar age to Zachary. One had been injured fighting migrating dragons with the knights and another had gotten hurt in one of Rosa’s dungeons. Hunters really did get around.

The one who had been a knight raised his hand. “My experience might help. It was pushing myself and lowering my physical limits that led to me quitting the knights, after all.” It had likely happened so long ago that he’d processed it all emotionally by now, but the Hunter still wore a bitter expression.

“Even after taking the potion, it doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with them on the outside, right?”

“Yes. Allen seems perfectly fine other than being a little tired.” Sara pictured Allen’s current state. She’d been beside herself with worry while he was unconscious, but after waking up, he was no different from the usual Allen.

“After you take it, you feel a bit of fatigue, but it’s not like you can’t move, and you can pick up a sword again right away. For people like us, who have worked hard to build up our strength, we want to get training again right away to start feeling better, right?”

Sara nodded. It was because of all the hard work they’d already done that they figured hard work would fix things.

“And we don’t want people to think we’re slacking off when we’re perfectly healthy. It’s hard for us to understand why we shouldn’t be working no matter how much the apothecaries tell us not to, so how would other people understand? Especially in a place like the knights, where you’ve got promotions riding on how hard you work.”

“It’s the same for Hunters. Your strength corresponds directly to how much you can earn. If you don’t want to starve, you have to hunt.”

Sara understood that. She’d seen with her own eyes Hunters struggling in Rosa because they couldn’t hunt.

“So, the knights need to be made aware of this as an organization, and Hunters need their basic needs covered... I’ll put all this information together later if I can.”

“We got a little off-topic, but that’s why most people end up training before the rest period the apothecaries give them is over. You start with basic training, of course, and then you think, ‘Well, I didn’t have any trouble with that,’” the man said slowly as if thinking back to that time in his life.

“Allen was unconscious, right? You can recover from the lethargy of a few days in bed soon enough, but we were knights. It wasn’t just basic training we had to do. We had to use physical strengthening too. That was when I started feeling like something was wrong.”

Allen was a Hunter who used physical strengthening as well. Sara leaned forward, knowing she had to pay close attention to this part.

“Knights need fine control over their physical strengthening. We have to use swords as well as our own bodies, so you have to adjust your strength to suit the tool you’re using. Of course, you might not have to do that if you can solve everything with brute strength like Nefertari.” The former knight grinned wryly.

“When I used physical strengthening, I could practically feel my strength leaving me.” He looked down at his hand, clenching and unclenching it as he recalled the sensation. “It was like only eighty percent...no, seventy-five of my power was coming through.”

That must have felt strange, Sara thought.

“It was a really nasty feeling, like I was a bucket with a hole in it. I panicked and trained even more, and the nasty feeling went away, but I was stuck at that seventy-five percent level of what I used to be able to do. I got fed up and was booted to Hunterdom after that.”

That wasn’t a very nice way to put it. He looked apologetically at the other Hunters around him as he said it.

When Sara thought about Nelly only being able to use seventy-five percent of her strength, she still seemed like she would be pretty strong, but it was dangerous if you couldn’t defeat the same monsters you could before your injury, Sara supposed.

“I’m one of the ones who was able to get back to my original strength,” another Hunter said. “I’m the careful type, you see.”

The trio must have been friends, because there was some good-natured jeering after the comment, but they seemed to agree with the assessment, at least.

“I was a mid-level Hunter at the time and decently strong, but I’d saved up some money too, and I tried not to be reckless. Somebody else on the same floor as me was reckless and I almost died ’cause of a fight they started, but Zachary just happened to be nearby and he saved me.”

“I can’t believe you survived that wound.”

“You were the one who gave me the potion.”

Sara remembered back when she’d first come to Hydrangea and heard that there were a lot of Hunters who idolized Zachary. It was because he was so reliable that he’d stepped up to become guildmaster in the first place, she supposed.

“Zachary told me to take it easy for a month, and I had enough money saved up that I was fortunately able to do that. Once I’d rested, I was out of shape, of course, but I was able to get back up to where I was before eventually.”

“So you didn’t have any problems after resting the whole time.”

This was valuable information as well. What about the last person? Sara glanced over at him and he told her something unexpected.

“I got hasty and went back to work too soon as well, so I got weaker. At first, I resented the person who gave me the supreme potion, but it wasn’t like I was ever aiming to be the best of the best or anything, so now I’m just glad I’m able to keep being a Hunter at all.”

The way he spoke made it clear just how long it had taken him to be able to think that way.

“I can only think that because I know someone who wasn’t able to keep being a Hunter, though.”

So there was someone other than the four people here that had used a supreme potion.

“Guy was a caster. Since he didn’t rely on physical strengthening like we do, he was able to move the same way he could before right away. He went right back to work since he said there was no way to push yourself even if you wanted to using magic, but he had to retire because he became unable to use any of his big spells.”

“He couldn’t use magic anymore?”

“To be precise, he couldn’t use magic that was as strong as the magic he could use before.”

Magic was convenient, and there was plenty of demand for people who could use magic to build things like the walls Sara had erected once. But there weren’t many people who could use magic strong enough to defeat monsters. A lot of Hunters focused only on physical strengthening magic.

“So even if your strength comes back, if you push yourself, you won’t be able to use physical strengthening or magic...” Sara put together everything she’d heard. “Does that mean you just have to avoid using mana?” Sara muttered and the room went silent. She looked up curiously and everyone was giving her a surprised look. “Err...”

“Right... Physical strengthening uses mana, doesn’t it?”

“Mana, eh? Haven’t heard that in a long time...”

This time, Sara was the one who was surprised.

“Physical strengthening comes naturally to a lot of people. You’re conscious of it when you’re training, but it’s not mana, it comes from inside of you... Err, well, it is mana, but...” Zachary explained. “I guess if you’re not a caster, you don’t think of the power inside you as mana.”

“Huh...”

In a world with mana, its presence was so natural that you didn’t even think about it. People who used physical strengthening just thought of it as their own physical prowess and nothing more.

“Then you can move your body just fine as long as you don’t use mana to train for a month. So all you need to do is avoid using physical strengthening or magic. Do you think that’s enough?”

“It couldn’t be that easy, could it...?”

The former knight almost laughed it off before the smile dropped from his face. If it really was that simple, then what had all his suffering been for? He couldn’t very well laugh at that.

“So then, is vitality just mana?” Sara murmured. There was no response. No one there knew the answer to the question. She felt herself getting lost in her thoughts for a moment before hurriedly lifting her head. “Umm, thank you for telling me all this. Do you mind if I share what you told me with Caren and Chris?”

“Go ahead.”

The four gave her the okay, but before she could say goodbye and leave, Zachary stopped her.

“Sara. I’ve got something I want to say too.”

“We’ll get going, then.” The other three Hunters ended up leaving instead.

Sara faced Zachary once more.

“You’ve done a lot again, not just for Hydrangea but for all of Trilgaia.”

“It’s nothing that grandiose.” Sara wasn’t expecting to hear something like that.

“But you still just want to be a normal apothecary, right?”

“Yes.” Sara nodded.

“That’s why we try not to treat you like an Invited. We don’t ask you for the impossible and don’t give you requests if we can help it. It’s sort of an unspoken agreement, or at least pressure from them,” Zachary said with a wry smile.

He didn’t have to explain who “them” was. Sara wasn’t sure how she felt about this, though. It was like she came with some sort of instruction manual.

“That’s why I won’t make a request of you this time, but if I’m being honest, I’d like your help. Especially since you came all the way to the guild to talk to me.”

It was true that she didn’t usually talk to Zachary even when she did visit the Hunter’s Guild. Even she was a little impressed by her courage.

“Well, what do you want my help with exactly?”

“I want you to bring an advance party down to the hole that’s opened up. Of course, it’ll only be those capable of going down to the bottom floor, but there’s just so many gargoyles down there...”

“Right.” Pretty much what she’d been expecting, then. Considering what Sara could do with her barrier, it did seem like the most efficient way to deal with the problem.

“I want to bring two groups down there, one to deal with the gargoyles and another to split off and investigate the hole.”

“I bet more people will want to be in the investigating group.”

“Not necessarily. Most Hunters are pretty careful. There are just a lot of hot-blooded types around you, Sara.”

Personally, Sara had no interest whatsoever in finding out what was behind the hole. She did like being able to use her power to help people, though. She didn’t like the idea of going down where there were a lot of bug monsters, but she’d deluded herself into feeling like she was okay as long as she didn’t have to see them.

She had some flexibility when it came to her work as an apothecary, and if the Hunter’s Guild made a request of her, Caren was bound to tell her she should go and help them out instead. She would be worried about not being able to see Allen, but there were plenty of people in the mansion to keep an eye on him.

“I’ll ask Caren on my way back, and if she’s okay with it, I’ll come in with Nelly tomorrow.”

“You will? That’d be great.”

It wasn’t set in stone yet, so she didn’t think there was any reason for him to be celebrating. Sara sort of got the feeling Zachary was looking at her like she was his niece or something.

“A little while ago, you would have said you’d have to ask Nelly too, not just Caren. I guess you’ve grown enough to decide what kind of work you want to do without talking to your guardian about it, Sara.”

Sara realized he was right. “Oh, now that you mention it...”

“Ha ha ha. I hope I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Seen off by a smiling Zachary, Sara left and headed for the Apothecary’s Guild once more. It had gotten pretty late, so Caren was on her way out, but Sara quickly shared with her what she’d learned. The permission to go help out at the Hunter’s Guild was easily acquired.

“You’re like the strike force of the Apothecary’s Guild, Sara,” Caren teased.

There was a time when she’d thought she was allowed to do whatever she wanted because she wasn’t much use as an apothecary, but that wasn’t the case anymore. She was even able to accept Caren’s remarks without any hard feelings.

“Well, I have run a branch office in the dungeon before.” Sara was smiling by the time she left the guild. “I was crying from the shock of it all three days ago, but I guess I started feeling better at some point.”

She wouldn’t be able to relax completely until Allen was fully recovered, but Sara hurried back to Ri’s mansion feeling determined to do what she could in the meantime.

She got back late enough that Chris had already handled Allen’s dinner and after-meal potion, so all she was able to do was say hi to him, but that was fine since he’d excitedly told her, “Chris said I could get up tomorrow. I’m not allowed to hunt for a month, but I can go about my daily life normally now.”

Sara hurried and finished her own dinner before meeting up with the lounging Wolveriés. She was prepared for Chris and Nelly to be shut up in their own room but found them hanging out with Ri and Elm instead. She was relieved to see them but wondered at the same time if they shouldn’t be getting some more rest.

To make matters worse, Chris frowned awkwardly as soon as he saw Sara.

“Sara, I’m sorry.”

Sara looked at him in shock. Normally, no matter what sort of craziness Chris got up to, he never apologized for a thing, as if he felt it was only natural for him to cause Sara inconvenience. Just what sort of trouble had he caused to feel he needed to apologize?

“I wanted to let you monitor Allen’s condition yourself, but he seemed so miserable staying still that I gave him permission to get out of bed. He seems healthy enough that it shouldn’t be a problem, at least.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I don’t care who watches him as long as he gets better. Actually, I doubt there’s anyone who wouldn’t be grateful to have you looking after them, Chris.”

So she said, though she was surprised he had managed to guess what she was thinking.

“But I’m sure you want to take responsibility for him as an apothecary, and you want to make sure personally that his treatment goes well.”

“Err...” Sara finally realized that it wasn’t a matter of being considerate or whether Chris had changed as a person. It was that Sara had become an apothecary Chris had acknowledged. “So you really meant that stuff about the graduation exam.”

Maybe he hadn’t been serious at the time, but all of this stuff with the supreme potion really must have made him acknowledge Sara’s growth as an apothecary. Sara pulled herself together even as she felt a warm feeling spreading through her chest.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I did want to talk to you about what Allen should do for the next month, though.”

“Oh?” Chris leaned forward raptly. He must not have expected Sara to be so proactive.

Sara told him about how she’d gone to the Hunter’s Guild to hear from people who had taken a supreme potion before, and what they’d told her.

“What stood out most to me was that the person who didn’t do anything at all recovered best.” The Hunter who had called himself careful. “But even though I was able to hear from more people than I expected, it was still only four. And out of them, only one of them was able to fully recover. I would need to hear from more people to be sure, but it sounds to me like the best thing to do during the one-month treatment period is to not use physical strengthening or magic.”

“I see.”

“But I’m not sure if I should tell Allen that he can train normally outside of using magic. What if I’m wrong and just doing sword training or strength training causes him to get weaker?”

“Hmm.” Chris had listened, but he didn’t seem to understand what she was worrying about. All that showed on his face was confusion. “Just let Allen decide for himself.”

“What...?” If she did that, he would train for sure.

“Would he blame you for it if he got weaker as a result?”

“Well, no, I don’t think so, but...”

Allen had always been a positive, upstanding boy.

“He’s not a child anymore. It was his fault that he almost died in the first place and it will be his responsibility to recover from the supreme potion. It’s important that he make an informed decision, but it’s not an apothecary’s job to hover like a mother hen.”

“Yeah, I guess so...”

Chris’s words were harsher than she had been expecting. Frankly, they hit her right where it hurt, which was the part of her wondering if she was worrying too much. Still, it wasn’t as if Sara had no arguments to make. Allen wasn’t just a patient to Sara. Chris hadn’t done anything for Sara in Rosa, but Allen had supported her the whole time she’d been there.

All of a sudden, she was annoyed, feeling like the person who hadn’t helped her back then had no right to say anything about Allen, even though she knew that feeling had nothing to do with what it meant to be an apothecary and what Allen should be doing to recover. So, she did her best to ignore her irritation. “I’m going to go talk to Allen.” That was the most important thing.

“By the way, about tomorrow.” Sara turned to face Nelly instead.

“Yeah?” Nelly gave her a dubious look after quietly listening in on her conversation with Chris.

“Zachary asked me to help out exploring the depths of the dungeon. It’s nothing dangerous, though,” Sara emphasized, though even she wasn’t sure why she was making excuses. “He just wants me to help the Hunters get around down there with my barrier since there are so many gargoyles.”

“Oh yeah? Are you gonna do it?” Nelly’s eyes were sparkling as she asked. It was plain as day that she was excited by the prospect of Sara going into the dungeon.

“I think so. I’ve gotten permission from Caren already.”

“We’ll go to work together tomorrow, then.”

Sara was relieved that Nelly simply supported what she wanted to do without comment.

“Did you hear we’d be splitting into two groups?” Ri asked, listening in with a big grin on his face.

“Yes. A group to cull the gargoyles and a group to explore what’s past the hole,” Sara answered.

Ri looked satisfied. “You, me, Elm, and Chris will be the exploration team.”

Apparently, Ri hadn’t been able to contain his curiosity when he’d heard about a new floor in a dungeon in his territory. Thed would be staying aboveground in his place.

“My brother’s the Guild Director, but he has to stay up top because of father’s selfishness.”

Nelly was teasing Ri, but what about Elm?

“I was the first one who found it, but I had to help carry the wounded up instead of exploring it. I should be the first one in there,” he said defensively when he noticed Sara looking at him. Evidently he wasn’t giving up his spot to his older brother.

“Well, we can’t let the whole family get wiped out. Someone’s gotta stay behind.”

That must have passed for a joke in a family of fighters like them. Sara was the only one who didn’t laugh at it.

“Wait, what are you doing, Nelly?” Sara realized Nelly hadn’t been in the list Ri had given her earlier.

“I’ll be hunting the gargoyles. I’m curious what’s beyond that hole, but it’s more important to get some of that gargoyle meat I missed out on earlier. I’ll hunt up a bunch of ’em, okay, Sara?” Nelly’s eyes were practically sparkling with anticipation.

“Well, Nef should be fine against some gargoyles. I’m curious what’s beyond the hole too, so I’ll be with the explorers,” Chris said, though no one had asked.

“Wait, but I’m not supposed to be with the exploration team or anything. I’m just going to get everyone to the hole safely.”

When Sara protested her placement in the exploration team, all she was met with in response was sunny smiles.

Leaving the consensus of a gathering behind, Sara went back to her room, but she didn’t feel like going to bed right away. She sat down at her desk with a pencil and some paper instead.

“I was supposed to be on a break today, but I ended up pretty busy anyway...”

She was happy that Allen had recovered, but now that she could relax somewhat, all the anxiety and regret she’d kept hidden in her heart had sprung out, causing her to act a bit impulsively.

“There’s too many things I need to do, so I should write them down so I don’t forget.” Sara looked down at the memo pad. “First, I need to figure out Allen’s physical therapy plan. I want to figure this out today.”

She made a list.

“Then there’s my report on what I heard today. I already told Caren and Chris, but I should write it down before I forget everything.” It was good that she’d gotten some firsthand testimony about recovering from a supreme potion, but four people probably wasn’t enough of a sample size. “I’d like to hear from more people once this thing is taken care of. I can ask if there are any more people who have taken one in the Hunter’s Guild, but Hydrangea’s probably not going to cover it...”

She spoke her thoughts aloud.

“There are dangerous dungeons in Rosa and the capital. And the capital has migrating dragons, so there are probably a lot of people there who have taken one. I should definitely check there.”

She got as far as thinking it would be convenient if there was someone she could ask about this before she realized with a start, “Noel! I should ask Noel!”

Noel was younger than Sara, but he was much more talented than she was. If she sent him some supreme healing herbs as a souvenir and asked him to research the effects of supreme potions with her, he would likely take interest.

“I can write a letter to Noel in the capital... For Rosa, I could ask Ted...? Hmm... Guess I’ll think about it and decide later.”

She’d reconciled with Ted, but they still weren’t close enough to write each other letters.

“But I bet he’d be frustrated if I bragged that I made a supreme potion and passed Chris’s graduation test. Okay, I’ll do that once everything’s calmed down too.” Sara smirked, looking forward to writing a letter that bordered on harassment.

“What else? Let’s see...”

She thought there was something else she still needed to consider, but her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier.

“It was pretty hard coming back up through the dungeon all at once like that. It’s tiring being proactive.”

If Nelly were still sharing a room with her, she’d probably have told her to get some rest for tomorrow, Sara thought, feeling just a bit lonely.

“Taking care of my health is just another part of my job. I should get to bed.”

It was the end of a day that had been terribly long despite how little had happened in it. As soon as Sara had climbed into bed, she was off to the world of dreams.

“I’m good on wolves! Oh... It was just a dream...”

She’d dreamed about the Dark Mountain for the first time in a long while. It must have been because she was thinking about Rosa the night before.

Sara opened the window to a comfortable spring breeze that was still just a little bit chilly.

“I’ve gotta get ready and bring Allen his breakfast.”

She hurried down to the kitchen to find Allen sitting at a table in the corner eating some bread. It was the table the kitchen staff used to eat and take breaks at.

“Morning, Sara. Guess I woke up early.” He’d asked the kitchen staff for an early breakfast. “You were gonna bring me food, right? I thought I’d tell you that you don’t need to do that anymore.”

“Oh, okay. It’s not like it was an inconvenience or anything, though.” Sara sat down across from Allen and asked the kitchen staff for a piece of bread herself. “I’ll write this all down later, but I want to tell you one thing first. You can go about your daily life, but don’t use physical strengthening or magic under any circumstances, okay?”

“You said something like that yesterday too, but what do you mean specifically?”

“Well...” Sara was about to explain when she glanced at the clock and saw that it was later than she was expecting. She’d slept in since she’d stayed up late the night before, it seemed. “Sorry, I have to help out at the guild today, so I’ll tell you when I get back, okay? Just don’t use physical strengthening!” she repeated, picking up another piece of bread and hurrying out to the dining hall. Everyone else was probably finished eating already at this time.

So rushed was she that Sara didn’t even notice the frown Allen wore as he watched her go.

Since Ri was part of the group, they set off in a carriage, unlike usual. It was just because he was the lord, of course. Since Ri had been the captain of the knights, his physical abilities were no less impressive than those of the young people in their party.

Inside the carriage, Ri told her that one of the knights had had to use a supreme potion during migrating dragon season back when he had been captain.

“I’m sure it’s happened since I left too. Just like you experienced, there are times when the dragons fly too close to the capital and simply driving them off isn’t enough. That former knight was probably the one I’m familiar with.”

It had been Ri himself who had given the man the potion.

“It was a situation where he might have died from the potion but he would definitely die without it. It was my responsibility to take as his commander, not the apothecary’s. Of course, I wasn’t able to protect his spirit as a knight after that...” he said regretfully.

Having a boss like Ri would probably lessen your guilt, but there would still be times when the apothecary would have to be the one making the decision. That was another reason Sara was determined to get this information together.

When they arrived at the Hunter’s Guild, the veteran Hunters were already gathered around Zachary. It was a smaller group than Sara had been expecting.

Sara was a little surprised to find Kuntz among the exploration group.

“I count as one of the first discoverers just like Elm, so I’ve got the right to check it out too. I dunno if I’ll be able to leave the safe zone, though.”

“But...” Sara swallowed the rest of her question. She was going to ask if he’d be okay on his own since he was always hunting with Allen, but then she realized that he’d have the strongest party members possible with him, and she could just protect him on the way down there.

“I won’t push myself, but if I don’t test my limits a bit, I’ll never be able to keep up with Allen. I want to take whatever opportunities I can get.”

He must have come to his own conclusions after the incident just like Sara had. There was a strength in Kuntz’s eyes that Sara thought was probably mirrored in her own as well.

The exploration group couldn’t hide their excitement and the gargoyle group was getting fired up since Nelly would be with them. Meanwhile, Thed, who’d have to be on standby at the guild, was sighing like he had a headache.

“Who do I go to in this party for common sense? Sara?”

“What? No way. I can’t wrangle this group.”

“Kuntz, then.”

“It’s not gonna be me either.”

Neither of the young people wanted that responsibility forced onto them.

“Fine. Zachary, as the guildmaster, I’m counting on you to make sure nobody gets out of control.”

He should have just asked Zachary from the start. Naturally, no one pointed out the inconvenient truth that he couldn’t ask anyone with the name Wolverié.

They were headed for the lowest floor, so just like when they had gone in looking for supreme healing herbs, they hurried down with only minimal resting. It was business as usual on the rest of the floors, and as they sped downward, Sara watched Hunters tackling floors that matched their own abilities.

“Looks the same as always on the other floors. If there aren’t any monsters moving between floors, I guess it’s not like it was back with the continental tortoise.”

Leave it to the guildmaster to have his eye on things like that.

When they passed from the fourteenth to the fifteenth floor, for a moment, everything seemed to be as it always was from the safe zone. Still, Zachary and the other Hunters kept their guard up.

Among them, Sara realized Chris’s eyes were pointed low, so she crouched down and took a look at the ground.

“Can you tell?” Chris asked, like he was giving her another test.

“The grass is flattened. Doesn’t look like there are supreme healing herbs around here, though. Ah! Chris!” Sara couldn’t help lamenting.

“Yes. The silver dragonmint has been flattened. We have a little in stock still, but I wonder if it will recover by fall...”

By now, the dragon repellent they made from silver dragonmint was indispensable to the migrating dragon hunts that took place in the capital from fall to winter. Sara hadn’t even imagined that having some heavy gargoyles lumbering around would affect her job as an apothecary.

“We’ll have to do a full investigation of the damage to the fifteenth floor’s vegetation in addition to investigating beyond the hole. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

Investigating the plant life was fun, but it wouldn’t be fun to see it all destroyed.

“But there’s nothing we can do until the gargoyles have been taken care of. Let’s put our faith in the Hunters.”

Sara stood. It was her job to get the group to the hole from here. Her job as an apothecary could come later.

“I don’t see any of the gargoyles, though. And there were so many of them before. Is it because the floor’s so big?”

No one agreed with Sara’s conclusion after a brief survey of the area.

“They’re right there, Sara. See?”

At Kuntz’s words, Sara felt that familiar shaking and whipped her head back and forth.

“What?! But there aren’t even any walls!”

Something dirt-colored that Sara had thought was the ground slowly began to stand.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

“G-Gargoyles!”

She’d thought they just clung to walls, but apparently once they fell from the walls, they could then disguise themselves as the ground.

“This is interesting. This quantity of gargoyles is rare in and of itself, but usually they climb back up the walls right away. Never seen gargoyles disguising themselves as the ground before... They’ve changed color too.”

As Elm had pointed out, they were a darker color than they’d been just a few days before. That was why Sara hadn’t noticed them.

“Already down on the ground, eh? Well, that makes them easier to hunt. Okay, should we get started?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Sara hurriedly stopped Nelly, who was already raring to go. Frankly, she was scared to make her way forward while the Hunters were doing their thing. “Can you wait until we’ve made it to the hole?”

“Right. Let’s form a line with Elm in front. Sara, would it be easier to keep your barrier up from behind Elm or in front?”

“Behind would be better. I’ll make it big just to be safe.”

The exploration team formed an orderly line and moved forward at a fast clip almost like they were some sort of Something Quest party.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

Was it just Sara’s imagination or did the gargoyles look sort of annoyed as her barrier pushed them aside?

“When there’s this many of them, they kind of look like cotton sheep, don’t they, Allen? Oh...”

Allen wasn’t here today. He was the only one who shared Sara’s memory of pushing through a herd of cotton sheep to save some Hunters, which made Sara a little lonely.

“Hmm... I don’t see it.”

Sara felt a little bad for making Kuntz humor her.

“It’s my second time experiencing this barrier of yours, Sara. It really is incredible,” Elm said.

“This is my first time inside a dungeon with Sara. Even knowing the barrier is there, it’s still a little frightening being surrounded by monsters like this. But it’s fascinating being able to observe living gargoyles up close. I’m very glad to get the chance to experience this,” Ri said, glancing this way and that.

Sara was reminded of those safari tours during which you could drive through areas with wild animals in them. At least, she was pretty sure that was a thing.

“I wonder if you could make money giving dungeon tours to nobles in the capital or something. Like, ‘Tour the depths of the dungeon with an Invited!’ or something.”

“You could add ‘Leave your protection to the Wolveriés’ to your slogan,” Ri suggested cheerfully.

“I don’t think I could afford to pay your salaries.”

“Hmm. How much could you pay?”

Sara joked back at him, but Ri was giving it some serious thought now, much to her distress. She gave it some more thought and realized she didn’t want to be down in dungeons where there were bug monsters anyway. Before she could apologize for getting ahead of herself, however, they spotted that wall straight ahead.

“Ooh, there really is a big hole in it.”

Sara was relieved when Ri’s interest turned to the wall.

At the time, they hadn’t been able to tell much about it with all the gargoyles around, but it was easy enough to tell now. There was a gentle slope beyond the hole.

“Definitely looks like the entrance to the next floor.”

“Looks just like all the other ones. If you told me this was always here, I’d believe you.”

Zachary and Elm got up close and gave their observations. As the rest of the party got excited, Sara focused on keeping her barrier up around them. They stopped right around where Kuntz had been at the time of the collapse and spotted an empty area around the hole where there were no monsters.

“Looks like there is a safe zone. That’s reassuring, but just makes it more likely there really is a new floor down there.”

The group bunched up instead of staying in a straight line and entered the theoretical safe zone.

“Go ahead and remove your barrier, Sara.”

“Okay.”

Sara let her barrier shrink down to the usual size that just covered her.

“Graaah.”

“Groooh.”

The gargoyles were repelled when they got close just like they were by her barrier.

“The safe zone seems to be about the same size as it is on the other floors. There’s more than enough room for multiple parties to fit inside. It’ll be easy to explore using this as a base,” Zachary muttered with relief.

“Well, shall we?” Ri asked him.

“Yes.”

They both turned around at the same time.

Sara turned around as well and saw the other Hunters valiantly facing off against the gargoyles. Nelly was among them somewhere. Sara’s job was done, then. She could watch the Hunters from here, and maybe look for medicinal plants that had escaped the gargoyles’ damage.

Right when she was about to take a load off...

“Let’s leave this to them and move on. Ready, Sara?”

“Huh?” Sara turned around when Zachary called her name.

“The passageway’s probably safe, but it’s not like anyone’s ever been down here before. We’ll be counting on your barrier just in case.”

“Err... Okay.”

She was fairly certain the request had been to escort them to the wall with the hole in it, but it was hard to say no in a situation like this. What Zachary said made perfect sense, and it wasn’t like she wanted her friends to be in danger.

“This is exciting, isn’t it, Sara?” Kuntz asked.

Not really. She kept her response squarely internal.

The passageway wasn’t too cramped. They didn’t have to travel in single file, so they moved through it as a group. Everyone was pretty relaxed, probably because of the trust they had in Sara’s barrier. They quickly came upon the light of the exit.

Everyone was light on their feet. They didn’t say anything, but they must have been full of expectations.

“I’ve gotta concentrate on my barrier...”

Sara was the only one whose fear outweighed her expectations, so she focused more intently on protecting everyone with her barrier.

Zachary and Ri stepped through the exit first, then Elm, Chris, and Kuntz. Sara and a few more Hunters brought up the rear. The scenery they emerged to was familiar, with white clouds drifting through a blue sky.

“Oh!”

Everyone turned to Sara when she cried out. There were gently sloping hills with short grass growing thickly over them. Here and there, there were large trees, and big wolves lounged beneath them.

“It’s the Dark Mountain...”

“Growl...”

“Growl...”

Even their growling was nostalgic.

“What the—?! What are mountain wolves doing here?! Hydrangea’s supposed to have hellhounds!”

Zachary was clearly on edge, but Sara couldn’t help taking a few steps forward.

“If the caretaker’s cottage was here it really would look just like the Dark Mountain...”

She could see a herd of elk in the distance. Wyverns flew in the sky. It was the place Sara had first dropped down to. The place she had run as fast as she could for the first time.

“Wow! It’s like I’m home!”

Sara almost felt like she was about to take off running before Chris grabbed her by the waist.

“Sara! What’s gotten into you?!”

“Huh?” Sara looked down at Chris’s arms around her and then looked forward once more.

“Growl!”

“Growl...”

There was a pack of mountain wolves around the safe zone.

“We’ll eat you.”

“Come out, weak ones.”

Their growls were clearly different from those of the Dark Mountain’s wolves. She could practically hear them speaking.

“It’s not the Dark Mountain...”

“Of course it isn’t. I’m shocked it looks this similar, but it’s a completely different place.”

“These aren’t my wolves...”

They weren’t the wolves Sara had tossed leftover meat on the bone to. These weren’t the funny mountain wolves who tried to taste her every time she let her guard down.

“Calm down, Sara. Hydrangea’s dungeon has forests and plains in it even though it’s underground, right? This floor just happens to resemble a mountain,” Elm, who had seen many dungeons, explained.

“It really does look exactly like the part of the Dark Mountain where the caretaker’s cottage is,” Chris murmured, looking around. His arms were still firmly wrapped around Sara and he showed no sign of releasing her anytime soon. “It’s the place you spent two years in from when you were ten. It’s no wonder you’d be confused by the similarity.” Chris stopped for a moment and Sara could sense him looking down at her. “You’ve never been the reckless type. What came over you?”

Sara knew she was the careful type without him having to tell her. So why had she almost run out into the dungeon?

“Well, ’cause I know I’m safe here...” That was all she could say. “Ever since I went to Rosa to look for Nelly, it’s been unfamiliar people, unfamiliar towns, unfamiliar common sense... I’ve been on edge the whole time.”

Sara patted Chris’s arms to let him know he could let go of her now.

“I wasn’t used to the Dark Mountain at first, but by the time I left, I was really comfortable there. I wasn’t afraid of anything as long as I could defend myself against mountain wolves and wyverns.”

She extricated herself from Chris’s arms and took a few steps forward.

“Sara! Look out!”

“It’s fine.”

Ri tried to stop her, worried even with her barrier, but Sara held up a hand to stop him. She walked forward slowly and then turned to face everyone else.

“If it’s the same as the Dark Mountain here, then it really is fine. Just look.”

Sara made her barrier bigger and slipped out from the safe zone.

“Growl!”

“Growl!”

The mountain wolves were repelled by her barrier and came back looking frustrated. Persistence was a calling card of theirs.

“Come here.” Sara shrunk her barrier down around her body and held a hand out to the mountain wolves.

“Stop!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ri yelling and Chris stopping him.

The mountain wolves gave her a cautious look, but when they realized the barrier stopping them was gone, one of them lunged for Sara’s outstretched arm, trying to bite it off.

“Yap!”

There was a loud crack as its teeth broke and the wolf ran to the back of the pack, tail between its legs, before curling up, pawing at its face. Sara had no sympathy for it. She knew that its teeth would grow back by the next day and it would saunter right back up to her like it had never tried to bite her in the first place.

The more clever mountain wolves cautiously began to back away.

“Look, I’m so small. You don’t want a bite of me?” Sara teased and two wolves snarled like they were annoyed, leaping at her. They were both repelled by her barrier, and eventually none of them had the will to attack her anymore.

“Growwwl.”

Eventually, one yawned and sat down a slight distance away from Sara. Then the rest of the wolves all started lounging around again as if they’d never even seen her.

“Sara!”

“She’s fine.”

After that exchange between Ri and Chris, the mountain wolves got up and ran off somewhere.

Soon, there was a loud boom, and a wyvern crashed to the ground.

“The wyverns on the Dark Mountain know better than to go for me.”

The mountain wolves were soon prowling again, after the downed wyvern. Sara sucked the wyvern into the storage backpack she wore and strolled back into the safe zone.

“I’m much more comfortable on the Dark Mountain than in Hydrangea’s unfamiliar dungeon. After all, there aren’t any bugs here.”

Maybe it was because it was always dry and sunny that there weren’t really any bug monsters around on the Dark Mountain.

“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?”

“Sara!”

Ri ran over and patted Sara all over, repelled by her barrier each time. She weakened it so that it wouldn’t affect the people she was close to and gave Ri a hug.

“I was worried. It’s terrifying, even when I know you have your barrier. Please don’t do anything reckless.”

“It was Nelly who told me to let a wolf bite my hand right after I came here, you know.” Sara giggled and Ri hugged her tight, finally relaxing.

“Of course it was. You know, we might have to work on your common sense again from the top, Sara. I can’t imagine what the people who looked after you in Rosa thought,” Ri lamented.

Sara looked behind him and found Zachary, Elm, and Kuntz all looking at her with dumbstruck expressions on their faces.

“I know your barrier’s incredible. I mean, that’s why I asked you to do this job. But still, that was too much...”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She’d been this way since she was twelve.

“You act too much like a normal girl, so I forget sometimes, but you really are one of the Invited, huh?”

Zachary’s words didn’t sadden Sara. She knew that he was just surprised. He wasn’t afraid of her and he wouldn’t ostracize her or anything.

“That surprised me... I guess you can tame mountain wolves. Come to think of it, weren’t there some people who called you a monster tamer in Rosa?” That was what Kuntz was concerned with.

“I’m not a monster tamer. And the mountain wolves aren’t tame either. They’ll try to bite me anytime they think they can, so it’s more like we’ve got a truce.”

Monsters were monsters. She’d learned not to let her guard down around them up on the Dark Mountain.

“Still, you took a wyvern down with one blow? Or was it one blow from the wyvern?” Elm said with a wry grin.

Ri nodded, finally calmed down. “Absolute defense that can even repel a wyvern. Sara’s power is even more convincing now.”

Cheerful laughs came from a few of them, but they couldn’t forget. This was the lowest part of a dungeon, and it was yet unexplored as well.

“Well, if we keep an eye out for wyverns above and don’t get caught up in a herd of elk... No, if we don’t get surrounded by mountain wolves, we’ll probably be fine,” said Elm.

“We will not!” Kuntz retorted in Sara’s place.

“If this place really is on the same level as the Dark Mountain, that means that Hydrangea’s dungeon rank is all the way up there with Rosa’s now. That’ll mean more Hunters here, so we’ll need more lodging to accommodate them,” Ri mused, focused on what he’d have to tackle as the local lord.

“If it’s the same as the Dark Mountain, then we’ll be fine as long as we don’t let our guards down. Just like Sara did, all we gotta do is punch a few of the mountain wolves and they’ll back off. Let’s keep exploring.”

The Dark Mountain had strong monsters in it right from the entrance. It was a place where knights could easily get injured if they let their guards down, but it was no problem for explorers of Zachary and Elm’s level.

“I’m sorry. I think I’ll just hold you back, so I’ll stand by here. I might be okay if I were teaming up with Allen, but I’m not confident I could hold my own alone.” Kuntz elected to stay behind.

“Can I stay behind too, then?” Sara chose the same. If it was the same as the Dark Mountain here, she wouldn’t have to worry about any unfamiliar monsters, but there wasn’t anything she could contribute other than her barrier.

Zachary let her stay behind. “If Hunters come down here, they’ll have to do it without you. It’d actually be better if you stayed behind so we can get a real sense for what it’s like down here. What do you want to do, Chris?”

Chris was an apothecary, not a Hunter.

“I’ll come with. If it’s the same environment as the Dark Mountain, I’m the most familiar with it after Sara.”

That was reasonable. The place resembled the Dark Mountain, but they weren’t actually there.

“I’ll go too,” Ri volunteered. “This is a chance to see what the place Neffie spent over ten years in is like without having to go all the way there.”

He was strong enough for no one to be concerned about his age. Sara wasn’t worried about him and his son Elm didn’t have any objections either.

“See you later.” Sara waved at them and the Hunters went off to explore.

The mountain wolves that had been hanging back with all the strong adversaries around gradually started to show themselves once more.

“Those guys are after me for sure.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Sara was strong, so they wouldn’t go after her, but they probably thought they might be able to get the weak one next to her. That was just what mountain wolves were like.

“Well, I took the opportunity to come here as one of the people who found this place, but I’m not confident enough to go any farther.”

“There’s nothing you can do about that. This place is like the top of the Dark Mountain. Not even the knights can make it up there if they’re not careful.”

Sara and Kuntz sat down on the ground in the safe zone, relaxing.

“Are you going back to the Apothecary’s Guild after this job’s done, Sara?”

“Hmm... I’m thinking about it.”

Sara had finally made up her mind to try a little harder just yesterday, but she still hadn’t decided exactly what she was going to try to do.

“With everything that happened with Allen, I’m wondering whether I can keep going as an apothecary the same way I have until now.”

“Same as me.”

Kuntz picked up a stone at his feet and tossed it to the left. He must have imbued it with wind magic, because it flew a long distance before falling to the ground. The mountain wolves lying about followed the stone with their eyes and Sara did as well. She was surprised by what she saw when the stone fell.

“Oh?”

“Yep. It’s a gargoyle. This thing was the first time I’d seen gargoyles. It’s scary when they’re just hiding in the ground, isn’t it?”

It was scary when they rolled down cliffs as well, but seeing something that you thought was a rock that turned out to be a gargoyle was terrifying.

Still, she was impressed Kuntz had noticed. It had probably been there the whole time, but Elm and Zachary hadn’t shown any signs of noticing it.

“The new floor will probably be opened up for everyone soon enough. I’m thinking of joining somebody’s party until Allen comes back. But if you’ve got some time, there’s something I’d like to ask you, Sara.”

“What is it? I can’t promise anything until I know what it is...”

It was rare for Kuntz to ask Sara for something.

“I want you to teach me your barrier.”

“My barrier?”

Now that she thought about it, some adults like Chris and Vince who were good at magic had managed to replicate her barrier with some effort, but Kuntz had never seemed interested before. She’d never seen him trying it out himself.

“I’ve seen adults with a lot of mana and Invited like Haruto using it, but I’d given up on it from the start, since I don’t have that much mana myself. But you said that thing before, Sara...”

“What thing?”

“‘Mana will empower you in whatever way you imagine.’”

“Oh. Those aren’t my words, they’re just what was written at the start of my magic textbook.”

“Right. But it’s just so fanciful, right? Nobody takes that stuff seriously.” That couldn’t have been nice for the person who wrote the textbook to hear. “But you said it like you really meant it. ‘Mana will empower you in whatever way you imagine.’ Those words are where your barrier came from, right?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so.”

“Then those words aren’t just nonsense. They should be true not just for the Invited but for us regular people too.”

What was obvious to the people of this world who had always had magic wasn’t obvious to Sara. So those words at the start of the book hadn’t just been an exaggeration, they had been a treasured truth.

“So I thought I should be able to do it too, regardless of how much mana I have.”

“Hmm... Well, I can tell you how I think about my barrier, so you should try it like that. You can practice it anywhere, not just in the dungeon, and it won’t hurt anyone either.”

Sara thought back to when she’d taught her barrier to Chris and Vince. At the time, however, they’d just gone in and out of it a few times and picked it all up on their own. She hadn’t really taught them anything.

“I think they said something about it being like shield magic in all directions back then...”

“Shield magic?”

“Yeah. For me, it started out when I saw a cockatrice egg bounce. I pictured something round around me that would make things bounce off it just like that.”

“I’ve never seen a cockatrice egg before...”

True, that might be a pretty rare sight for most people.

“Well, I’m weak and not very observant, so the purpose of the barrier is to protect me from everything around me. But you’re different, right, Kuntz?”

Chris could use her barrier too, but he didn’t need to since he could use physical strengthening. It had nothing to do with the amount of mana her barrier needed.

“Unlike me, you notice monsters hiding like that gargoyle. You wouldn’t miss a wyvern flying over you, right? So when would you want a barrier?”

“Right...”

What would Kuntz’s ideal barrier be like?

“I think it would be like a shield that I could throw up just to block a gargoyle coming at me or something like that. I want to be able to protect myself so I’m not a burden to Allen, and be able to buy time to run away.”

“Then how about picturing a shield instead of a bubble in all directions?”

It might have been faster to get a fellow caster to show him some shield magic, but all he had right now was Sara.

“A shield, huh? I’m not very good at physical strengthening, so I’d like to deflect attacks from a bit of a distance away from me. A shield might be good for that.”

Kuntz held his left hand up in front of him. “I use my right hand for attack magic, so I’ll picture it with my left. The size...”

“The size?” Sara hadn’t ever paid much attention to anyone wielding a shield, so she couldn’t quite picture it.

“Well, I guess I want to protect my upper body... Shield,” Kuntz muttered.

Sara thought she could sense something appearing before him, but it disappeared before taking shape.

“I think I can do it, maybe...but it’s hard to picture an invisible shield.”

“An invisible shield, huh...? Oh, wait.” Sara turned to face Kuntz. “It doesn’t have to be invisible, though, right? I can make my barrier different colors, right?”

“Oh yeah, you made that stretcher white, didn’t you?” Kuntz remembered it well since it had only happened just a few days ago.

“My barrier is transparent like glass, so I picture frosted glass, but what do you picture when you think of a shield?”

“I guess I’d picture brown like wood and leather.”

“Then how about trying to make your mana brown?” Sara tried making a shield barrier in front of her. “It’d be best if it was semitransparent like this, right?”

“That’s amazing.”

“Don’t just be impressed. Fine-tune it. How big should it be? What about the shape?”

“Maybe a little bigger and more vertical.”

Sara changed the shape of her barrier how Kuntz told her to.

“That looks good. Okay, I’ll try it.”

“No, wait a second.” Sara stopped Kuntz. “The color and shape are important, but you have to think about what kind of shield you want it to be too.”

“What kind of shield?”

“My barrier generally repels whatever hits it with the same force it used. An attack for an attack and magic for magic. But a normal shield wouldn’t reflect all that, right?”

“That’s true.” Kuntz seemed to be imagining hitting Sara’s shield with a sword. “Well, if I can, I’d like to reflect attacks and magic like you can, Sara.”

“Okay. Then...”

Kuntz was the first person who had gotten so involved with Sara’s barrier like this, so she was starting to have some fun herself.

“I’ll stop your magic with this shield, so throw something at it. A rock or something.”

“Huh?”

“Or wind.”

“I can’t do that. Throwing magic at a girl I’m friends with?”

Sara grinned. She was happy he thought of her that way.

“There are female Hunters too, aren’t there? You don’t hesitate when you train with them, do you?”

“Well, I don’t throw magic at them...”

Apparently, they didn’t train like that since there weren’t many monsters who attacked with magic.

“But you should see how it reflects magic. Come on.”

“Just a little stone, then.”

There was a tiny little sound against the barrier Sara was holding up.

“Kuntz...” Sara moved her barrier to the side. “I can reflect a wyvern’s attack. I’m doing this for you, so watch how it repels your magic.”

“Okay. Here I go.”

This time there was a proper impact against Sara’s barrier.

“Whoa!”

She moved her barrier aside and Kuntz was striking an odd pose in surprise.

“The stone almost came right back at me...”

“That’s what happens when it reflects stuff. Try a sword next.”

She said “sword,” but all Kuntz had was a dagger.

“Okay. Yah!”

She didn’t think he normally shouted when he attacked. He sounded embarrassed, but he yelled so Sara would know he was attacking and struck her barrier with his dagger.

“Ugh!”

Sara moved the barrier aside again. Kuntz had dropped his dagger and was holding his trembling wrist with his other hand.

“That was some impact. So that’s what it feels like to have your attack repelled. Guess that explains the mountain wolves’ teeth breaking. My wrist almost broke,” Kuntz muttered to himself as he clenched and unclenched his trembling hand. “I can make stones and blocks, so I should be able to make something hard...”

He stood up and stuck his hands out like Sara often did, narrowing his eyes. “Sara’s shield. It reflects anything, and it’s hard but smooth. Right, like a mirror.”

A brown shield took shape in front of Kuntz.

“Sara, could you hit it with my dagger?”

“O-Okay.”

She didn’t want the attack reflected back at her, so she just knocked on it with the blade.

Crack!

“Aww, it broke. I shouldn’t picture it like a mirror...”

“B-But...” Now Sara was getting nervous. “It was a partial success, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah...”

Kuntz sat back down and hugged his knees, hanging his head. Sara wasn’t sure what had happened to him, so all she could do was hover around him.

Eventually, Kuntz rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. They were red when he looked up.

“You really can make anything you think of.”

“Yeah.”

“Not that I’ve figured the shield thing out yet.”

“Yeah...”

Even without teaming up with Allen, Kuntz was a talented caster for his young age. He just always felt inferior around Allen, who people saw as a hero after he managed to wound the continental tortoise.

“It’s the same with my barrier, but you can do more things if you really concentrate on picturing it, like making it bigger or smaller or putting it closer or farther away. Like, let’s see...”

Sara hardly ever used magic other than her barrier, but she was pretty good with earth magic after practicing so much during the continental tortoise incident.

She knelt down and put a hand on the ground of the dungeon. “Let’s have a ducky.”

If it came out just like she pictured it, she could make one of those toys that float in the bath. It didn’t quack or anything, but a brown duck took form out of the earth.

“I can move my barrier, so I can move this too.” Unfortunately, it didn’t have any legs, so all it did was slide along the ground.

“What the heck is that?” Kuntz held his stomach and laughed.

“It’s cute, isn’t it?”

“Sure it is...”

Now that she thought about it, Allen was always with them, so she’d never talked this much with Kuntz all on his own.

“All I can really use is water and earth magic, but I’m scared of monsters, so maybe I’d try making pit traps.”

“Under their feet? Let’s see.”

When she’d made blocks, it was easy to picture them just by placing her hand on the ground like she had earlier.

Kuntz put his hands on the ground and looked over at a lounging mountain wolf. “Pit trap,” he muttered.

“Growl?”

The mountain wolf stood up curiously. There was a little hole about the size of a bucket under it.

“That’s all I can manage, but...” Kuntz stood up cheerfully. “I’m not out of mana even after all this. I’m not sure if picturing things more clearly has an effect on the amount of mana you consume, but it’s just like you say. I can practice this outside of the dungeon. I can still...” He clenched his fists. “I can still grow.”

Sara clapped beside him. She hadn’t known she could make a duck until a second ago. With her plentiful mana and imagination, surely there were still things she could do as well. It might be nice if it was stuff that could help out Kuntz and Allen.

Eventually, the explorers returned and the group headed back up to the surface for the day.

It would be a pain to commute here and back every single day, so using this morning’s recon as a basis, they would get some more people together and carefully map out the floor, staying the night in the safe zone. The gargoyle hunt would continue as well.

Upon returning to the mansion with the same group that had set out that morning, Sara looked for Allen right away.

“Allen left, saying he would be getting back to his normal routine. He thanked us very politely on his way out.”

The mansion staff liked Allen and Kuntz, who were always so friendly. Ri had told Allen he could stay for as long as he liked, but not wanting to rely on other people too much was one of Allen’s good points. Sara was still a little worried he’d push himself, though, and she was a little bit lonely too.

“I wanted to make a physical therapy plan with him, but we never got a chance... What should I do? Would it bother him if I reminded him to take his potions? I wanted to tell him that the new floor is like the Dark Mountain too...”

Allen had been to the Dark Mountain as well, and he’d fought mountain wolves before. She was sure he’d understand how she felt about it.

“I’ll stop by his place when I head out tomorrow. Then I’ll go to the Apothecary’s Guild and the Hunter’s Guild...”

From the way everyone was discussing it so intently after dinner, Sara could tell that the dungeon becoming a floor deeper was a pretty big deal for Ri and the Hunter’s Guild, and that they would be busy handling the issue for a while after this. Today’s exploration had confirmed that it wasn’t an emergency like what had happened with the continental tortoise, though.

This meant that it was probably safe for Sara to focus on what she needed to do for her own growth.

“I should write that letter to Noel today before I forget, though.”

After making a plan for tomorrow and finishing everything she had to do today, Sara slept like a log.

The next day, Sara left the mansion early. She wanted to see Allen, after all. She was curious about how Kuntz was going to practice his magic too, though he’d only just decided to start doing so the day before.

“Now that I think about it, this is my first time going to see where Allen and Kuntz live.”

They’d all lived in Hydrangea for years now, but Allen always came to the mansion when they needed something, so she had never gone to see him.

“Let’s see, it was an inn that serves food, one street back from the main road... Here it is.”

Neither Kuntz or Allen particularly liked to cook, so they rented a relatively cheap inn long-term.

“Here’s the entrance. Wow!”

The dining hall was on the first floor and there were stairs that led up to the inn above. They must have had good food here, because it was bustling even at this early hour.

A counter on the left seemed to be the reception for the inn, but there was no one there in the morning.

“Here for a bite?” a woman waiting tables asked her.

“No, umm, I’m here to see Allen and Kuntz.”

“Oh yeah?” the woman said teasingly and Sara worried she’d said something to cause a misunderstanding. “Those kids already ate and headed out.”

“What? He’s supposed to be recovering...”

The woman threaded through the tables and came over to Sara with a smile. “I heard he got badly injured or something in the dungeon, but he seemed fine when he came back. He left just like he always does this morning, full of energy.”

“Did he? I hope he remembered to take his potion...” Sara couldn’t help herself from worrying out loud and the woman raised her eyebrows.

“Do you think he’s a little kid or something?”

Sara suddenly felt self-conscious. She could sense other people in the dining hall looking at her. When she glanced around, there were some familiar faces. It mostly seemed to be Hunters eating here.

“I know I called them kids earlier, but that’s just ’cause they’re younger than me. Those boys are full-fledged Hunters, you know.”

The Hunters went back to their meals at that, evidently satisfied. Sara was forced to realize that everyone here felt the same way and that she was worrying too much. Still, it made her feel bad to have someone point it out to her like that.

“Thank you,” she said and trudged off.

“Come back for a meal sometime! I promise the food is good!” said the woman as she left. Sara bowed her head on the way out.

“Chris said the same thing to me... I just have to believe in Allen and focus on what I should be doing.”

She pumped herself up and went to the Apothecary’s Guild to report to Caren that she’d sent a letter to Noel, before heading to the Hunter’s Guild. No one had said as much to her, but she felt like her skills would be in need more at the Hunter’s Guild than the Apothecary’s Guild right now.

There was more energy in the air than usual at the Hunter’s Guild.

“Excuse me.”

“Oh. Thanks for yesterday.” The lady at the reception desk smiled and greeted Sara. “Exploring again today?”

“We finished with that yesterday. Today, I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help. Also, I want to make a request.” Sara took out a piece of paper she’d put together the day before.

“Let’s see... Ah, it’s from the Apothecary’s Guild? For people with experience taking supreme potions. Seeking accounts of their experience. For about an hour. With an assortment of potions as the reward. An assortment of potions for just an hour is a pretty good deal.”

The receptionist seemed satisfied with the request.

“I don’t see any issues with this, so we’ll accept the request. I’ll put it up on the board right away. There’s just one more thing...”

The receptionist’s eyes flicked to a group in the corner of the room. They were probably the Hunters going down into the depths of the dungeon. Sara found herself glancing in that direction as well, then did a double take, unable to believe what she was seeing.

“Allen!”

“Ah, you saw him.”

The receptionist had probably looked his way deliberately, but Sara ran over to him without even realizing that. Kuntz was next to him too.

“Allen! And Kuntz!”

“Morning, Sara.” Allen gave her a guilty look and Kuntz looked a little awkward as well.

“What do you mean, ‘morning’?!”

Sara wasn’t very loud, but her voice still drew attention. She could tell that Allen’s expression was hardening because of that too.

“They said you could go back to your normal life, but they didn’t say you could go back to hunting!”

“Sara.” Allen wasn’t wearing his usual gentle expression and that made Sara nervous. “Being a Hunter is my normal life.”

“But if you go into the dungeon, you’ll end up using physical strengthening, won’t you?”

“I won’t,” Allen said firmly. “I’ve told the people I’m going with that I can’t use it. I’m just coming along to carry things and take care of our campsite.”

“But...”

“Sara. Just let me go. I can’t stand not being any good to anyone.”

Sara opened her mouth to keep arguing, but Kuntz stopped her.

“We’ve discussed what we should do and decided yesterday that the two of us should just help out with carrying stuff.”

“Kuntz...”

“I’m also gonna practice the stuff we did when we’re at the campsite.”

Sara still wasn’t okay with this. She clenched her fists and kept her mouth shut rather than telling them she understood. But there was one thing she wanted to make sure of before they left.

“You can’t use physical strengthening or magic...”

“You don’t have to keep reminding me,” Allen said, his tone a harsh rejection. “Why do you think I’m going down there in the first place? It’s because if things keep going this way, I won’t be able to protect you... No, I won’t be able to protect anyone. Do you want me to stay weak?”

Allen looked away and didn’t meet Sara’s eyes again. All Sara could do was recoil like she’d been slapped.

“Sara! I wanted to ask you about something.”

The receptionist’s voice snapped Sara out of her frozen state.

“Yes?” She turned around and headed back to the reception desk.

“Let’s go over it together back here.” She brought Sara back into a breakroom near the guildmaster’s office. “Come here. You can cry if you want to.”

“No.” Sara gave the receptionist a grateful smile and sat down tiredly in a chair. “Thank you. I was just surprised... I’ve never really gotten into an argument like that before.”

In Japan, just getting by had taken all of her energy. She’d never been healthy enough to fight with anyone. She was so shocked to argue with such a good friend that she hadn’t been able to process it enough to be sad about it.

“That was pretty tame as arguments between Hunters go. And fights between friends can get way nastier. It’s normal to argue sometimes. It’s just...” The receptionist smiled at her softly. “You two are both such good kids no one would be able to find any flaws in you. Everyone was surprised back there, and I think you both were too, so I had to butt in a little.”

“Thank you, really.” Sara didn’t know what she would have done if no one had said anything.

“He won’t be able to protect you, eh? Such a boy.” The receptionist sounded happy for some reason.

“But nobody needs to protect me...” Sara had never said she wanted to be protected. She hadn’t even hinted at it as far as she knew.

“Yeah. Who does he think they requested to protect the group that went down to the bottom of the dungeon yesterday, right? Pretty cocky coming from a guy who just carries stuff for other people.”

The receptionist’s words were so harsh, Sara’s jaw dropped open.

“If he can’t protect you unless he’s stronger than you, then Allen will never be able to protect you.”

“Well...”

Allen was stronger than Sara. Sara couldn’t attack and couldn’t hunt monsters. But that was just because she didn’t want to do those things. If she wanted to hunt monsters, then she’d be able to hunt as many as she pleased, and she could defend herself from just about any kind of attack. But when she’d passed out from the migrating dragon’s roar, Allen had been the one to carry her to safety. He was also always there for her when she needed him. That had nothing to do with whether he was strong or could protect her or not.

“You can get mad, Sara.”

The receptionist’s gentle voice pulled Sara out of her thoughts. She’d said those things for her sake. She knew Sara couldn’t speak ill of anyone, so she was doing it in her place.

“You’ll become an old lady if you have to wait for him to become strong! That’s not what’s important! Men, right?”

“Y-Yeah.”

It seemed like more and more of the receptionist’s personal feelings were coming into the mix, but Sara agreed regardless, if a bit hesitantly.

“Ahem. Anyway.” The receptionist cleared her throat and put a finger up to make a point. “Everyone here knows that you’re strong because you’re an Invited, but you’re also just a nice, normal kid, Sara. All the female employees here really like you. It’s the same with Nelly. We’re proud to have you here.”

Now Sara did want to cry—from the unexpected compliments she was getting.

“Just tell that jerk off.”

“Jerk...?” Sara almost laughed. She would never imagine calling Allen a jerk. That just made her sad, thinking about all the things the woman might not know about him, though.

“But you might have gotten told off because you’re overprotective too, Sara.” Overprotective. Chris had told her she was overly concerned as well. “But what’s wrong with that? You might be an adult at seventeen, but you’ve definitely still got room to grow.”

The last time Sara had been seventeen, she’d been preoccupied with nothing but staying alive and studying. She had no idea normal seventeen-year-olds, seventeen-year-olds with enough energy to do whatever they wanted, had to deal with such annoying feelings.

“The two of you obviously don’t agree, but you shouldn’t just bottle up those feelings. You should take the time to really understand why you feel the way you do.”

When she left the Hunter’s Guild, the Apothecary’s Guild was the only place for her to go. Her coworkers didn’t ask about her dark expression, but even their consideration was somehow unbearable to Sara, so she went back to the mansion as soon as she could instead of staying late. Trudging forward, looking down at her feet, she heard some footsteps before a hand suddenly landed on her shoulder.

“Hey, Sara. What a coincidence. We just so happen to be going home at the same time.”

It was spring, but the air was still pretty cold in the evening. Yet for all her stamina, Nelly had a bit of sweat on her forehead and was panting slightly.

“Nelly...”

This was no coincidence. She’d probably heard about what had happened at the guild today and ran here as fast as she could.

“I thought you’d be staying the night in the dungeon for a while starting today.”

She’d left before seeing Nelly this morning, so she hadn’t had a chance to ask her about her plans. She’d been assuming she’d be having dinner alone with Ri tonight.

“Well, I heard the new floor’s like the Dark Mountain. It’s definitely nostalgic, but I figured I didn’t need to go down there if they didn’t need me. I got my fill of the Dark Mountain back on Dark Mountain, after all.” Nelly laughed. True, she had been there for a lot longer than Sara.

“Plus, we should be getting the gargoyles I hunted yesterday for dinner tonight.”

It was adorable how restlessly Nelly looked toward the mansion. Sara was relieved to realize that she hadn’t just been hurrying home because she was worried about her.

“This is why I told you not to be a mother hen, Sara.”

“Huh?”

Sara turned around and found Chris there, trying to catch his breath.

“Ugh, it’s hard to catch up to you when you go all out, Nef.”

It seemed Chris hadn’t joined the explorers today either. If it had taken even him this long to catch up to her, then Nelly really must have been hurrying.

Nelly shrugged exasperatedly. “You need to work on your communication skills, Chris.”

“What? Communication skills? You’re lecturing me on communication skills?”

Sara didn’t think either of them had room to speak on this matter, but she burst out laughing at the way Chris sounded so indignant, given that he usually worshipped the ground Nelly walked on.

Right now, she didn’t want to hear I-told-you-sos, but her laughter had washed away any misplaced anger she felt toward Chris. In its wake, however, she was left with that same regret she’d been feeling all day. Her gaze fell to her feet again as she wondered just what she should have done.

“Uhh, well, Sara... Sorry for rubbing it in.”

Sara looked up in surprise. This was the second time in recent memory that Chris had apologized to her, and it was just as strange as the first time.

“Right, umm, Nef, that thing...” Chris stammered. He must have been just as embarrassed as Sara was surprised.

Nef continued, seeming to catch his nervousness. “Huh? Oh, uhh, right. Sara, you left in the middle of talking to that receptionist today, right?”

“Yeah.”

After the receptionist had comforted her, her feet had automatically taken her to the Apothecary’s Guild, but now that Nelly reminded her, she was pretty sure the woman had said something to her before she’d noticed Allen.

“She said she had a request she forgot to tell you about. They want you to look into what medicinal plants can be found on the new floor, as an apothecary.”

“Medicinal plants...” Well, she was interested in that, but there was someone better suited for that job than her, wasn’t there? “I thought Chris would do something like that.”

“I’ve accepted the request as well, of course, but I’m more interested in focusing on the rare plants that can be found there.”

Sara had been taught by Chris, so she knew more about medicinal plants than some apothecaries, but she didn’t know as much as Chris. His idea to focus on more rare plants made sense to her, though.

“Then what should I do?”

“You should focus on the plants in your guide.”

She could do that, but she didn’t see why it had to be done now. The plants in her guide could be found outside of the dungeon, after all. This request seemed a little contrived to Sara, but Chris seemed to realize what she was thinking.

“Just so you know, this isn’t some kind of job we’ve thought up for you to busy yourself with because of what happened with Allen. The receptionist was going to ask you about it before you even had your argument, right? Oh...” Chris shot a glance at Nelly. “How was that, communication skills-wise?”

“Just barely passing, I’d say.” Nelly evaluated him smugly, but Sara thought he should probably have just looked at her face to see if he’d said something wrong.

“Ahem. Anyway, it seems the folks at the Hunter’s Guild figured you weren’t so against going into the dungeon anymore from how you were acting yesterday. They’d actually like you to do a survey of the plants inside the whole dungeon if you’re up to it, but for now they’re just asking about the sixteenth floor. What do you think?”

Sara had been thinking about what it was that she should be doing, but she felt like she’d just been spinning her wheels for the last few days. But if there was a request for her specifically because of her barrier and her ability as an apothecary, then accepting it would be a proactive thing to do, wouldn’t it?

As Sara mulled it over, Nelly cleared her throat. “I think I’ll go along as Chris’s guard. He’s strong, but he doesn’t always have his guard all the way up when he’s gathering. And if the new floor’s like the Dark Mountain, there’s bound to be a bunch of cockatrices down there. I might even find some eggs.” Nelly was really letting her appetite speak for her lately.

“Chris’s guard?”

“Yeah. The request is for you alone, and you can explore on your own, right?”

Sara had thought that Nelly would come with her, but she was going to go with Chris instead. It didn’t exactly make Sara nervous, but it was unexpected.

“Just remember how it was back on the Dark Mountain? You always did your own thing while I was off hunting, right? You’ll be fine. I mean, that was you over five years ago, right?”

Even when she hadn’t been all that strong yet, she’d spent a lot of time on her own back when it was just the two of them living up on the Dark Mountain.

“Somebody who has to go retrain themselves in the depths of the dungeon is nowhere near your level, Sara. You should show off how strong you are. I’m on your side before Allen’s.” Nelly held her fist out in front of her. “Of course, as his mentor, I care about him too. I’m worried he’ll push himself. But you and Allen can both take care of yourselves now.”

Sara wondered if part of her problem was that she didn’t have the trust Nelly did in her or Allen.

“You’ll have to stay the night down there for a few days. It’ll be tough. And, uhh...” Nelly said awkwardly despite telling her to show off earlier.

Chris picked up where she’d left off. “It’ll be awkward with Allen there, that’s for sure.”

“Chris, you didn’t have to...”

“Isn’t it more kind to be up-front about these things?”

As the two adults started a conversation on their own about what was and wasn’t kind, Sara walked home with them, but her eyes weren’t pointed down anymore. They were pointed straight ahead.

“I know that being the lord takes up most of my time, but that’s why having dinner with you is something I look forward to every day!” Ri sobbed in an overblown way that was obviously supposed to cheer Sara up. “But I can’t monopolize such a brilliant apothecary. If you’ll accept this job, I should be grateful as the local lord. Just don’t push yourself.”

Elm was already staying in the dungeon as part of the group exploring the new floor. Maybe because he fit in so well with the other Wolveriés, it already felt a bit strange for him to not be here, but Sara also felt comforted to be with the usual group she considered her family. It helped that Chris and Nelly didn’t say any more about the situation with Allen and Ri had no way to know about it.

“I’ll accept the request.”

Nelly and Chris helped her recover from her dejected mood. She still wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but taking any kind of action at all was better than doing nothing.

She was always prepared to camp out, even with a tent. The mansion’s kitchen staff even gave her a ton of roast gargoyle, and since Sara didn’t hunt monsters, she had plenty of room in her pouch to carry it all.

“I’m heading out now.”

“Be careful down there.”

Ri warmly saw her off and Sara waved goodbye to him.

When she arrived at the guild with Nelly and Chris, it was no different from how it always was.

“Not all Hunters can make it to the bottom of the dungeon, after all. Most people are just doing their usual hunting on the floor that matches their ability level. That’s plenty important itself,” the same receptionist as yesterday explained to Sara. “By the way, I’m sorry I forgot to mention the request for you yesterday. It’s important, but it’s not pressing. I’m glad you decided to accept it, though. You’re okay with starting on the sixteenth floor?”

“I’m okay.”

“Great,” she said with a chuckle. “Even in this guild, there aren’t many people who can go down to the sixteenth floor. It’s so cool how you can say you’re okay down there so casually. Anyway...” Praising Sara as much as she desired to, the receptionist switched gears and explained the request. “We started mapping out the floor yesterday. You’ll start by confirming what we’ve got and checking those areas for plants.”

It was Sara’s job to fill in whatever medicinal plants could be found in the areas the Hunters had mapped.

“The silver dragonmint Chris found is more the jurisdiction of the Apothecary’s Guild, but advertising that you can gather rare things like that in our dungeon will serve to draw Hunters here all the same. The continental tortoise showing up here has already drawn more Hunters to Hydrangea despite the monsters in the dungeon being the same as they were before.” The receptionist winked at her. “And more Hunters means we get paid more. Good luck down there!”

“For the sake of my paycheck” went unsaid. The receptionist’s encouragement lightened Sara’s mood, she had to admit.

Sara headed straight to the bottom of the dungeon after that. Nelly and Chris weren’t talkative to begin with and Sara was still a bit dejected, so it was a quiet trip. This was Sara’s third time in only a few days going all the way down to the bottom of the dungeon, but she was getting used to it by now. By the time she started feeling a sense of accomplishment that she wasn’t as tired as she’d been the first time, they’d made it to the sixteenth floor.

“Hey, if it ain’t Nefertari! Didn’t think I’d see you down here until you’d hunted the gargoyles to extinction!” A veteran Hunter on standby in the safe zone clapped Nelly on the shoulder and welcomed her to the floor. “And with your hubby too. And...it was Sara, right?”

The reason he gave Sara a bit of an awkward look was no doubt because Allen was just nearby. Normally, he would have come running up to her, but he didn’t even try to meet her gaze despite obviously noticing her. It was frustrating seeing Kuntz looking between them like he didn’t know what to do either.

It hit Sara harder than she was expecting, but she didn’t want to let it show on her face if she could help it. She didn’t want them thinking she was here for Allen’s sake either. She wasn’t, after all.

“I’m here to do a survey on the floor’s medicinal plants.”

“Ah, got a job of your own, eh? Well, you should be fine if you’ve got Nefertari and Chris with you.”

Even if they knew she was one of the Invited, there weren’t many people who had seen Sara’s barrier in action. She knew why he would think that way, so she didn’t bother correcting him.

Sara looked over the safe zone and moved over to one side of it, pulling out her desk and a chair from her pouch.

“Oh, nice and prepared.”

Obviously, since she was here to work.

“If you have the map from yesterday, could I see it?”

“Oh, the guys working on it took it.”

They’d brought it with them since they weren’t sure when Chris would be coming.

Sara looked out over the Dark Mountain-like scenery. They were far away, but the group was still visible in the distance.

“They’ve fanned out into three groups to cover more ground, huh?”

“Four groups, technically. One’s here on standby. And handling some chores. Then I guess we’ve got an apothecary group starting today.”

Allen and Kuntz were on chore duty, then.

“In that case, it’s probably better to follow one of them so that we don’t waste the day.”

But which way should she go?

“Okay. I’ll take the right. There’s not a lot of hills, so it should be a good warmup for the first day.”

Sara picked the right side, so Nelly crossed her arms and observed her options as well.

“I’ll go after the center group, then. Cockatrices were always at higher elevations on the Dark Mountain, after all. That’s what I’m aiming for today.”

“That’s fine with me.”

Sara almost retorted that it was Nelly who was supposed to be accompanying Chris on his work, but she figured Chris was fine with any direction just like she was. So Sara and Nelly set off in different directions, taking breaks whenever they needed to.

“Hey! The little lady’s all on her own?!” the Hunter in the standby group called after them, but Sara wasn’t paying attention to any outside noise anymore.

“I’ll make my barrier a little bigger...”

“Growl!”

“G-Growl...”

The mountain wolves were quick to show themselves, but when they saw Sara, they started slinking toward Nelly instead.

“You’ll only suffer more if you go over there, you know...”

“Yap!”

Immediately, she heard one get sent flying, courtesy of Nelly’s fist. These mountain wolves had a long way to go if they couldn’t judge their foe’s strength at a glance. They probably had no idea Sara was judging them like this.

Sara could still see the group of Hunters she was following far in the distance, but as long as she didn’t look behind her, she felt like she was all alone in a big plain. She swiftly knelt down to observe the ground.

“This is so nostalgic.”

There was nothing nostalgic about a place she’d just visited the day before, but when she was crouched down in the grass like this, it reminded her of gathering medicinal plants up on the Dark Mountain while she waited for Nelly to come back home.

Sara took her medicinal plant guide out of her pouch. She’d memorized the characteristics of all the plants in it, but she found herself wanting to go back to the basics.

“Healing herbs grow all over the place, but greater healing herbs are in more rocky areas. And another thing you can find in rocky areas is...” She smiled when she saw something shift in the corner of her vision. “Make a small flame that’ll chase its target... Go!”

The flame Sara procured above her hand flew off after the stealth slime.

“Hey!”

Sara went to pick up the stealth slime’s magic stone without paying any attention to the shout of surprise that came from behind her. The stone sparkled like an opal in the grass.

“Haven’t seen one of these in a while either. Oh, greater healing herbs.”

The Dark Mountain was a treasure trove of medicinal plants. It was easy to miss them if you were just casually looking around, but if you knelt down and looked, there was a patch of greater healing herbs, and a little ways away there were some mana herbs.

“No way...” she muttered when she spotted purple supreme healing herbs growing in the shadow of a large tree. “I wonder if there were supreme healing herbs up on the Dark Mountain too. I didn’t know what they looked like back then...”

Chris had said there was silver dragonmint on the Dark Mountain as well.

“I bet I could find all sorts of stuff on the Dark Mountain if I lived up there now. Oh, bush strawberries!”

There wasn’t any need to write this down on the map, but Sara wrote it down in her own notes. There were a bunch of them growing in one area, so she picked as many as she could while she was at it.

She was having so much fun looking for medicinal plants that she didn’t bother going back to the safe zone for lunch, climbing up on a flat rock to eat one of her lunch boxes instead. Normally, she probably would have gone back to the safe zone, but right now she was on a job for her and her alone. She didn’t need to worry about anyone with her, and as long as her work got done, she could do it in any way she pleased.

Sara looked out over the scenery. In the left direction that she hadn’t decided to go in there was a coniferous forest. She was excited to find out what kind of plants grew over there. Directly ahead of her was a pair of people that she could tell were Chris and Nelly from the color of their hair. If she looked behind her, she saw the wall that separated the floors and the group of Hunters on standby in the safe zone. But right now, she was all on her own and free to do as she pleased.

“I usually eat lunch with everyone at the Apothecary’s Guild, and when I’m at the mansion, I’m always eating with someone there. This might be the first time in a while I’ve eaten alone.” When she said it aloud, she realized it really had been a long time since she’d been on her own.

“I was all by myself all the time on the Dark Mountain, though.”

She was alone, but she wasn’t lonely. She’d had a goal, and she had someone to spend her nights with.

“Huh? Wait, am I regressing?”

She didn’t have a goal right now. She just passed every day spending time with the people she loved. It was fun, but she wasn’t striving toward something like she was back then. She felt like she was close to realizing something important, but she couldn’t figure out what it was, which frustrated her.

“Whatever. I don’t need to find the right answer yet.”

In the end, she spent the whole day looking for medicinal plants until the exploration group returned.

“Oh, it’s Sara. I thought you were some new kinda monster. I was about to attack you.”

When one of the Hunters in the exploration group gave her an exasperated scolding, she finally realized that the sun was setting.

“Sorry. There’s so many medicinal plants down here, I got caught up in finding them.”

She couldn’t stop herself from gathering some while she was at it, but her first priority was writing down where they could be found on the map. She returned to the safe zone with the Hunters, reminding herself not to lose track of her task.

Nelly was already there, so Sara must have been in the last group to return. The safe zone was pretty packed with Hunters. Allen and Kuntz were busy getting dinner ready for everyone.

“Oh yeah, they said they’d be doing some chores, didn’t they?”

They were just serving up Guild lunches for everyone, though. Thanks to a suggestion from Sara, the lunch boxes sold by the guild in Hydrangea were handed out still hot. Veteran Hunters appreciated a hot meal after keeping their guard up all day in a place where even they might get hurt if they weren’t careful.

Sara liked her own lunches as well as the ones the kitchen staff at the mansion provided her, but the Guild’s lunches were good too, since they were provided by restaurants in town. She arrived at the safe zone feeling excited for dinner but found the atmosphere less peaceful and more confused than she’d been expecting.

At the center of the confusion was Nelly, and before Nelly was a large, round, white egg.

“You found your cockatrice egg, eh?”

“Sara!” Nelly whipped around when she heard Sara’s voice and gave her a tight hug.

“What’s the matter?”

Nelly loved Sara, but it was rare for her to hug her like that in front of a bunch of people. Was something wrong?

“Allen and Kuntz both say they can’t cook this cockatrice egg.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me...”

Their response was only reasonable in Sara’s mind. She snuck a glance at them and they were both giving Nelly awkward looks.

“None of us Hunters know how to cook a cockatrice egg, Nefertari.” A veteran Hunter stepped in to defend the boys. “I doubt my wife would even know what to do with such an expensive thing. You’d have to take that to a restaurant to get it cooked. This is the dungeon. You should just be glad we’ve got lunch boxes down here. Give up on fresh eggs.”

“But I worked so hard to find one...” Nelly grumbled.

Sara patted her on the back. “It’s a little late to make it for dinner tonight, so I’ll cook it tomorrow, okay?”

“Really?” Nelly said, her mood already lifting.

Sara patted her pouch. “Besides, the kitchen staff gave me roast gargoyle for today, remember?”

“Oh yeah!”

Nelly’s mood was fully improved now, but in exchange, Sara found herself on the receiving end of hopeful looks from the rest of the Hunters nearby.

“I’ve got enough for everyone, of course.”

“Ooh!”

Sara hurried to wash her hands in response to the crowd’s excited shout. She set up her table and started lining up plates of roast gargoyle on top of it. Accepting her lunch box from Kuntz, Sara took a few slices of roast gargoyle for herself and set them on top of her food, sitting down beside a grinning Nelly and having a bit of an early dinner.

The amount of meat you could get from one gargoyle wasn’t a ton, so Sara wondered just how many gargoyles Nelly had hunted to provide enough meat for all the Hunters to eat their fill on top of what she knew still remained back at the mansion. The thought made her a little dizzy.

“I thought there were a lot fewer gargoyles around. I guess it was Nefertari who hunted all of them.”

“I couldn’t find that many of them up on the Dark Mountain, after all. It’s not very efficient to hunt them, since you get so little meat from each one.”

Sara wasn’t sure if Nelly and the other Hunters were really on the same page or not.

They took their time eating, watching the strange phenomenon of the sun setting inside the dungeon, and the Hunters left their empty dishes on the table when they were done. Allen and Kuntz cleaned up the dishes and helped out the Hunters setting up tents.

Sara watched them out of the corner of her eye as she got out a bucket and a large pot, hefting the cockatrice egg into the bucket. It was time to use the laser magic she hadn’t used in a long while.

With a sizzling sound, she cut the top of the eggshell off, pouring the contents of the egg into the pot. She looked up with a start when she realized some of the Hunters were watching her, but she wasn’t done yet. First, she added some spices to the pot, then she beat the egg with wind magic.

“Now I can just fry it in a pan tomorrow night.”

As she explained the magic she’d used to the curious Hunters, she put away the prepared pot in her storage pouch. By the time she was done, the safe zone looked like a regular campsite, with tents set up and people relaxing on blankets.

“I’ve got to put up my tent too.”

Sara started putting her tent up next to Nelly’s when a hand appeared before her eyes.

“I’ll do it. I’m in charge of chores, after all. Gimme your tent.”

His voice was so stiff it was hard to believe he was talking to a friend. Sara hesitated for a moment, but eventually handed her tent over to Allen as he’d asked.

“Thanks.”

She could handle everything she needed to do on her own, but she figured she shouldn’t refuse Allen if the Guild was paying him to do these chores.

She sat down with her back to her tent and wrote down notes on the medicinal plants she’d found today on the Hunters’ map.

“Done with your tent.” Allen sat down next to her at a slight distance away.

“Thanks,” Sara said again. She wondered what he was doing and found that he was looking at a map just like her.

Kuntz brought a chair and sat down in between the two of them. It seemed they were working on combining today’s map with yesterday’s.

“We don’t have a lot to do during the day. We help everyone out in the morning and at night and make clean copies of the maps when everyone’s done exploring.”

“Huh,” Sara said, looking down at the map they were working on.

Allen was still acting stiff, but it wasn’t like he was ignoring her. Should Sara apologize for being insistent? She knew they didn’t have anything to do during the day, but was he okay working so late when he’d just recovered? Everyday life was supposed to be okay, but what did that mean exactly?

All these thoughts were spinning around in her head, but not a single word came out of her mouth, whether it was an “Are you okay?” or an “I’m sorry.”

“It’s so tense...”

“Why’s my stomach hurt more after exploring?”

She could hear Hunters murmuring behind them, but she paid them no mind, focusing on finishing up her map for tomorrow. Sara forced a lid on her swirling thoughts and scratched out the locations of the medicinal plants on her map.

“Okay.” She looked up when she was done and found the other two still copying their maps. “I’ll leave you to it.”

She tidied up her things and stood, hurrying back to her tent.

“You’re here tonight, Sara. Lend Chris your tent.” Nelly beckoned her over from her two-person tent.

“I’m fine on my own.”

“I want to spend time with you. I was with Chris all day, so it’s fine.”

Chris shrugged his shoulders, resigned. “I don’t mind being with you all the time, but if you want to spend time with Sara, then that’s what you should do. I’ll be borrowing your tent, Sara. But first...” This time, he beckoned her over. “Let’s share our information on the medicinal plants. I’m sure you found some rare plants yourself.”

“Well...yeah.”

It would have been nice if he’d said something earlier, but she shared the things she noticed all the same. She’d been primarily watching for the items in her guidebook, but it wasn’t like she’d ignored everything else.

Sara puffed up proudly. “There are supreme healing herbs right near the safe zone to the right.”

“They’re on the left too. It seems we’ll have a constant supply here in Hydrangea.”

Sara and Chris’s little meeting was happening quietly, but there were still Hunters who could hear them.

“How many apothecaries are there who can go all the way to the bottom of the dungeon?”

“It’s got nothing to do with Hydrangea. It’s just ’cause Chris and Sara are here.”

The Hunters poked fun at them at the start, but they got bored with the medicinal plant talk eventually and went back to their own conversations.

“I suppose you have to go deeper in to find silver dragonmint.”

“Hopefully there is some here.”

Even if there was, the only people who would be able to gather them were veteran Hunters or Sara or Chris. It was a difficult task even if they could find exactly where they were growing.

When they were finished, Sara went into her tent and let out a heavy sigh of relief when she saw Nelly’s face.

“There, there. You did good.” Nelly clumsily stroked Sara’s hair and Sara smiled dopily. They were all alone in the tent, but there were still a ton of Hunters all around them outside. Just having Nelly by her side was comfortable, though.

“I love getting to spend time with you, Sara.”

“I love it too.”

She was happy when Nelly told her how she felt too.

“And I’m looking forward to that egg tomorrow.”

“I’ll do my best.”

It was a night that was perhaps a bit too honest.

Sara decided to get up a little early so she had time to cook the egg, but when she woke up the next day, it sounded like people were already up and about outside her tent.

When she camped out, she always wiped herself down before bed and then changed into the clothes she’d wear the next day. She got up and washed her face before brushing her hair and taking the bucket of water outside.

“Oh.”

Most of the Hunters were still sleeping. There weren’t a lot of people outside of their tents, but she spotted a person with red hair exactly like Nelly’s sparring with someone on the other side of the camp. A few Hunters were watching bemusedly.

“It’s Elm and Allen!”

Sara almost ran over before she remembered she was holding a bucket of water and stopped herself after just taking one step.

“We told him not to push himself! He’s training?”

She went over to the very edge of the safe zone and slowly poured out her water to try to calm herself down.

“Growl.”

Right outside was a mountain wolf clearly waiting for someone weak to come out where it could reach them.

“Good morning to you too. I’m a little busy right now, though.”

“Growl!”

The wolf yawned as if to say, Not my business, and then sauntered off.

“Well, that calmed me down a bit.”

As she poured out the water in her bucket with Elm and Allen behind her, she told herself, “He promised not to use physical strengthening or magic. They’re probably just doing normal sparring.”

The sounds they were making were different than the ones she heard when Nelly and Allen sparred with physical strengthening or practiced with swords.

“And Elm knows Allen can’t be pushing himself. Chris hasn’t stopped them either. It’s fine, it’s fine.”

Sara took a deep breath and turned in a way where she wouldn’t see Allen. If she hadn’t come down here she wouldn’t have known what he was doing anyway. Sara was the one who had come after him, so she couldn’t complain about what he was doing down here.

“I won’t bug him.”

After that start to her day, Sara focused on locating medicinal plants without gathering any so she could be back early to cook the cockatrice egg.

“It’s nice that I don’t have specific hours to work. I can make my own schedule.”

Since she went back early, there weren’t a lot of Hunters in the safe zone yet.

“Oh, it’s that egg!”

One of the Hunters came up, watching her with interest. He was probably bored on a break from work. He was one of the youngest among the group exploring the floor, so he must have been very talented.

“Yeah.”

Sara got out her magic stone-powered portable stove, a frying pan, and the large pot with the egg mixture in it, and the Hunter pulled up the chair she’d set in front of the table and sat down nearby.

For this amount of egg, it would probably be better to use an oven, but you couldn’t do that when camping, so she’d just have to fry it in a pan. Sara greased the pan and poured some egg into it, folding it to fluff it up.

“Ooh... This is fun to watch.” Her audience was highly satisfied. “Guess our food would be a bit fancier if Sara was the one in charge of the cooking.” The man didn’t mean anything by the comment, but it made Sara’s stomach hurt a bit regardless.

“Ha ha ha. I agree, but Sara’s wasted on chores.” Kuntz gave the man a good-natured reply, but responding to comments like these with a laugh was usually Allen’s job.

Allen always laughed off a bit of sarcasm, but right now, he was just tossing rocks at Kuntz with no expression on his face.

...Wait, rocks?

Sara flipped the omelet to the other side of the pan as she snuck a glance at the two of them. Allen had a pile of similar-looking rocks at his feet, the kind Kuntz could create with magic. He was crouched down next to them, rhythmically tossing them at Kuntz.

“Yah! Hah!”

But they were bouncing off of something just before reaching Kuntz. When she looked closer, she saw a faintly colored semitransparent shield appearing and disappearing like a cloud in front of him. She hadn’t noticed right away because it only appeared for a moment right when it deflected each rock.

He’d already made a lot of progress when he’d only just started practicing with Sara two days ago. He’d thought about exactly how he wanted to use it and figured out how to limit its mana consumption as much as possible. Sara wanted to run up and practice with him, so it frustrated her that she couldn’t.

“It’s pretty interesting what they’re doing, right? Oh, hey, that’s starting to burn.”

“Ah! Okay.” Sara hurriedly flipped her eggs, finished shaping them, and put them on a plate. Then she re-greased the pan and poured more egg in. It was simple, but if she just kept repeating this, she’d have a good amount of egg done eventually. She used to do this a lot back on the Dark Mountain to get through all of the contents of a single cockatrice egg, she recalled fondly.

“Hey, can we try some?”

It was something Allen would usually be saying. She hated herself for thinking that about every little thing.

“Sure.”

The Hunter cut up the finished omelet while Sara was fluffing up her second batch, carrying the plate around and passing out pieces of it. He was a pretty sociable guy, but Sara was only just meeting him on this job, so he might have only come to Hydrangea recently.

“So good!”

“This is amazing.”

“We gotta make sure Nefertari doesn’t find out about this.”

“Who knows what she’ll do if she finds out we got some before she did.”

Sara giggled. Nelly wouldn’t do anything, but she’d probably fume silently about it.

“Hey, you two have some too,” said the Hunter. “Or can you not eat something made by the girl you’re fighting with?”

Sara almost fumbled her frying pan when that bomb dropped.

“Hey, cut it out. It’s between them.” One of the other Hunters cut in unenthusiastically and Sara waited nervously for the boys’ response.

“I’ll have some, of course.”

“...Yeah.”

She sighed in relief when she heard Allen’s muttered response a moment after Kuntz’s.

“Guy just has to apologize and it’ll be over, right? What a pain,” one of the Hunters commented, but Sara would never want to apologize or be apologized to just because someone said to. It wouldn’t feel sincere.

Sara and Allen’s relationship was still far from back to normal again today.

“Sara’s eggs! Somebody ate them before me, didn’t they?!”

By the time Nelly returned, Sara had a mountain of omelets prepared, but Nelly still figured it out somehow. What a mystery.

“You’d never go back early for anything but food, Pyron.”

Nelly was cool pointing her finger at the Hunter who’d been watching Sara, but she could only smile wryly at what she was actually saying. Also, apparently that Hunter’s name was Pyron. If Nelly actually remembered it, then maybe he had always been in Hydrangea.

“Oh yeah, sorry. It was super good. Thanks, Sara!”

“What?!”

Sara had never seen a Hunter provoke Nelly before, but if he was that bold, it made sense that he could butt in on other people’s fights.

There were still plenty of people in Hydrangea that Sara didn’t know yet. She had found yet another reason to be glad that she’d come on this trip.

“It’s fine, Nelly. I made a ton. And I put all my heart into it for you, Nelly.”

“O-Oh. Did you?” That was Nelly’s mood taken care of.

“I’ll wash the frying pan and pot.”

When Allen suddenly said that to her, Sara turned him down reflexively.

“It’s fine. I can wash them with magic.”

“I know, but this is my job.”

Sara wanted to tell him he should avoid doing anything that might make him use magic without thinking about it, but she held the impulse in and handed over her pan and pot. Allen got Kuntz to make water and washed them before handing them back to her. The whole time, their eyes didn’t meet.

“How long do we have to endure this awkwardness?”

One of the Hunters nearby complained, but he would just have to suck it up. It was even more uncomfortable for the two of them, after all.

Sara sighed quietly.

By day three, she was exploring farther away from the safe zone, so she got up earlier. It was fun making plans like that.

“Oh yeah, I’m fighting with Allen...”

She knew everyone around them was suffering because of the atmosphere between them, but she didn’t think they should have to capitulate because of that. Thanks to that busybody Hunter Pyron yesterday, though, Sara finally understood that the frustration she was feeling was just because she was fighting with Allen.

“Fighting, huh... Fighting... I don’t think I’ve ever had a fight with anyone before.”

When Sara realized that, she skidded to a halt on her way to the area she’d stopped investigating yesterday. She was running with physical strengthening, so she came to a stop rather suddenly.

“Growl!”

“Yap!”

“Ugh! There were wolves following me?” She saw the mountain wolves bounding away after they smacked against her barrier.

“Umm, what should I do?” She didn’t mean about the wolves. “I’ve gotten annoyed at unfairness a few times since coming to this world, but I’ve never fought with anyone... I don’t think I have, at least.”

Slowly proceeding to the spot she’d stopped at the day before, Sara counted the fights she’d had on her fingers.

“Even in my old life, I was so busy just trying to get by, I never fought with anybody...”

She couldn’t count them if she wanted to because she couldn’t even think of one.

“How do you get things back to normal...?”

“Gyeee!”

Wham!

A wyvern crashed into her barrier and slid to the ground. It must have thought she was good prey trudging along absentmindedly like she was.

Sara slid the body into the storage backpack on her back and started walking again, then figured it was no time for a leisurely stroll and began to run instead.

Stuck in the Middle

“Ah!”

“Stop! You’ll leave the zone!”

Kuntz grabbed Allen’s arm and pulled him back before he could jump out from the safe zone. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to stop Allen no matter how much he wanted to, not with Allen’s knack for physical strengthening. But with Allen’s magic off-limits, Kuntz was somehow able to pull him back, to his relief.

“Dammit!” Allen watched Sara from the very edge of the safe zone, cursing, which he normally never did.

Sara, who likely had no idea anyone was even watching her, sucked a wyvern into her backpack nonchalantly and started walking again. Kuntz noticed a distinct slump to her shoulders that he was fairly certain he wasn’t imagining.

“A little girl picking up a wyvern. It’s quite the sight.”

“Hey, don’t be rude. That ‘little girl’ is a full-grown Hunter.”

“Uh, no, she’s an apothecary, not a Hunter.”

Kuntz, still holding Allen’s arm, couldn’t help interjecting when some Hunters commented on Sara. She was the center of attention right now, undoubtedly.

“She hunted a stealth slime on the first day, right? Did you see that? Her magic curved.”

“Are you sure she’s not a Hunter?”

Sara was unaware of this, but people paid a lot of attention to her. Pyron, one of the Hunters watching her now, often followed her with his eyes.

It was no wonder, really. She was a sweet little girl in the midst of a bunch of veteran Hunters exploring the depths of the dungeon. No, she wasn’t just sweet. There was a lot more to her, though she was firmly fixed in the position of friend to Kuntz, so he had never really looked at her that way before.

To tell the truth, Kuntz had always thought Sara was earnest, funny, and hardworking. He’d taken a liking to her immediately when they’d first met, but the more he saw how Allen was when he was with her, the more he realized he couldn’t let those feelings of his grow into anything. Sara was important to him, but as his party member, Allen was more important.

Noel and Liam would go on about being her fiancé, but it was clear that their pursuit of her was more for noble political reasons and less for their personal feelings about her. Besides, he didn’t think they passed muster in Sara’s eyes anyway.

As for anyone else, Allen was always watching over her, so no one was stupid enough to make a move on Sara in Hydrangea. But Allen wasn’t with Sara right now. Not with them fighting like this, though, Kuntz thought to himself with a sigh.

“Okay, let’s clean up and get training,” Kuntz said to Allen, figuring Sara was probably out of sight by now. But someone here had to be the busybody.

“If you’re that worried about her, why don’t you make up with her already?”

Pyron, who’d been trying to mediate the situation in some way since the day before, pretty much spoke for all the Hunters present, but Kuntz had been deliberately not touching on the matter. Fights had to be resolved by the people who were fighting. Outsiders interfering would only muddy the waters. He knew that from experience.

Besides, Kuntz had a suspicion that part of the problem here was that neither of the two of them had ever had a fight before.

He was more or less aware that neither of them had had a normal childhood. They’d only had adults around them and hadn’t experienced messing around with kids their own age. Kids were always fighting over stupid things and then making up before they even knew it. It was through these experiences that they learned how to interact with people. Neither of them had ever talked to Kuntz about their childhoods, but it was easy for him to guess things about them from the things he had heard.

Still, even with what he could guess about them, Allen’s obstinance frustrated him.

He yanked on Allen’s arm again, more roughly than he meant to, and Allen let himself be pulled along. As they cleaned up the tents and the Hunters’ breakfasts, Kuntz wondered if he’d already forgotten that he’d almost died just a few days ago.

Kuntz had been worried for him, of course, but nowhere near as worried as Sara had been. It was only natural that she’d continue to worry about him after he woke up. He’d heard from some Hunters later that Elm hadn’t been exaggerating—people really could die from taking supreme potions, so they were only used very rarely. The Hunter who’d told him that had laughed and said he didn’t even own one himself, but Kuntz was stunned. He thought it was incredible that Sara had been able to make one on the spot and make the decision to give it to Allen even while she was worried out of her mind for him. Kuntz had tried to impress upon Allen how scary things had been while he was unconscious, probably to an annoying degree. He’d had the nerve to look not entirely displeased about how worried Sara had been for him, but then he was sulking about it the next day.

Kuntz regretted how he’d acted now, thinking he hadn’t helped matters himself. He was so happy when Allen had returned to their lodgings that he’d gotten a bit too excited talking about everything that had happened. He’d told Allen that he’d gone through the hole on the bottom floor of the dungeon as one of the people who’d first discovered it, and that he’d practiced magic with Sara, and that Hydrangea’s Hunter’s Guild would be doing an extensive survey of the dungeon’s new floor. And then he’d said...

“While you’re taking it easy, I’m gonna do my best to catch up to you even just a little bit.”

He hadn’t even stopped to think about why Allen had returned to their lodgings so soon. He hadn’t known that Chris had told Allen he could go back to his everyday life, but he was still nervous and felt like he couldn’t talk to Sara about it because she was so busy. He hadn’t known that Allen could always hear the Wolveriés and Sara talking about the dungeon in the mansion and that made him feel like he needed to be doing something, anything, so he’d practically fled back to his lodgings. And here was Kuntz, his party member, trying to get ahead of him while he could.

Kuntz had never seen Allen so panicked. If he went into the dungeon and left Allen behind, he was sure Allen would push himself. He would push himself, and just like Sara was worried he would, he’d become unable to progress any further as a Hunter. Kuntz could see it clear as day.

“Calm down, Allen. You know that no matter how far I get in a month, I’ll never reach anywhere near your level.”

It frustrated him, but Kuntz was weaker than Allen even at two years older than him. Considerably weaker. It was just the truth.

“I know that.”

“Oh, you do, huh?”

Maybe it was immature of him to get so frustrated by that comment. He’d asked Allen what he was so impatient about.

“What’s Sara...”

“What’s Sara...?”

“What’s Sara gonna do?”

“I dunno. You should have asked her before you left,” Kuntz had said exasperatedly.

“Can you ask her for me?”

“Why?”

“’Cause...” Allen hung his head, looking much younger than he was. “If it’s like the Dark Mountain down there, then she might not mind going. So she’s probably gonna take part in the exploration with Nelly and Chris, right?”

“Ah... Yeah, maybe. She was pretty excited down there today. Running around like it was her backyard, honestly.”

“If Sara explores the bottom of the dungeon...” It took him a while to get the words out. “If I’m not with her for a whole month, she’ll realize she doesn’t need me around at all, won’t she?”

“Wait, what?”

Sara was an Invited, and though she was a pacifist, she tended to get caught up in trouble. And whenever she did, Allen accompanied her. Even when there was no trouble, Allen would be by her side if he thought there might be danger. Everyone saw Allen as protecting Sara, and Kuntz thought the same thing. He’d been dragged into enough by the two of them that he’d seen it plenty himself.

“But you’re always protecting her... Wait.”

There were definitely times when Allen’s presence had helped her, but now that he thought about it, Sara tended to get herself out of trouble more often than not. If she could walk freely in the depth of the dungeon without worrying about mountain wolves and wyverns, then did anyone actually need to protect her?

“I guess Sara doesn’t really need anyone to protect her.”

Kuntz finally realized that, but he still didn’t understand what that had to do with what Sara chose to do next.

“Whether Sara decides to go into the dungeon or not, what can you do? Either way, you can’t push yourself until you’re fully recovered.”

“If she stays at the Apothecary’s Guild, it’s fine. But if she’s going down to the bottom of the dungeon, then I want to be down there too.”

“Allen...” Kuntz put his hand to his forehead and sighed. As long as he could make it down there, that would be fine. There would be no problems as long as he stayed inside the safe zone.

“You can’t get down to the bottom of the dungeon without running with physical strengthening.”

“I can. I tried it today. I can run just fine.”

“You’re already pushing yourself!”

He wasn’t. Not really. Even with his mouth shut tight, Kuntz knew what he wanted to say. Allen was the same type as Nelly. To put it indelicately, they tended to think with their muscles. Not only did they have enough mana that they could keep physical strengthening up indefinitely, they also had incredible underlying stamina.

“My normal daily life involves moving around a lot.”

“But still...”

“You’re going into the dungeon too, right?”

“I mean, yeah. I’m not going to the bottom, though. I got some pointers from Sara, so I want to try practicing my own take on her barrier. It might even be better to stay out of the dungeon and just go outside of town or something instead.”

Kuntz wanted to perfect the shield magic he’d practiced with Sara while he still had a feel for it.

“A shield, right? I can help you practice. I’ll do whatever if Sara’s gonna stay out of the dungeon, but if she’s going in, then I want to be where she is.”

“I can’t believe you...”

Kuntz thought Allen was being reckless. If something went wrong, he could be stuck unable to get any stronger as a Hunter. If that happened, not being able to protect Sara would be the least of his worries, and he had to be aware of that.

All sorts of things went through Kuntz’s head, but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to say any of them.

“Okay. I got it.” Saying only that, he stood. “I’m gonna go get some information. Just sit tight for now.”

Kuntz headed to the Hunter’s Guild after that and learned about the request they had for Sara. And that it would be up to her whether or not to accept it.

Then he went to the Apothecary’s Guild to talk to Caren and made sure of exactly what Allen absolutely must not do.

He went back to the Hunter’s Guild and negotiated for him and Allen to be hired to do chores for the group exploring the new floor of the dungeon. Everyone had been hesitant about taking Allen, but Kuntz explained how he felt about Sara, and he didn’t regret doing so. He might have even hoped Allen would feel embarrassed about it later.

“Why do I have to do all this?” Kuntz muttered to himself on the dark streets at night. He really felt that way, so why had he gone and done all that?

“This is the first time he’s ever been selfish with me.”

Sara was a really good kid, but Allen was just as good himself.

“I know he’d get mad if I said that to him, but I’ve known him since he was fourteen. He’s such a good kid it hurts.”

He never messed around or did anything bad. He just silently trained himself and hunted in the dungeon. When he was met with unfairness, he didn’t get mad about it, he just let it go.

“If he was my brother, I’d grab him and just shake him. Tell him, ‘You’re too good! Be a little more selfish!’”

It wasn’t bad to be hardworking. But he had to fight for what he wanted. He had to reach for something and struggle to achieve it. Even if it looked like selfishness to other people.

“I won’t let him use physical strengthening or magic. I won’t let him ruin his future. And I’ll perfect my shield while I’m at it. I just need to use my head.”

The exploration team that was headed for the bottom of the dungeon would set out tomorrow. It would be helpful to have someone handling their chores, but it wasn’t something they needed. And since Allen couldn’t even use physical strengthening, they were really going to have to work hard to earn their keep. How could Kuntz make sure they did that, while also training and making sure Allen didn’t push himself?

“I might be using my head more since becoming a Hunter than I ever did before.”

After explaining how it would all work thoroughly to Allen and making him promise not to use physical strengthening or magic, he pushed his still-tired body to the Hunter’s Guild the next morning, which was when the showdown had happened between Allen and Sara.

“You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

Kuntz knew that Allen hadn’t really wanted to say that. He’d probably just panicked since he hadn’t been expecting to see Sara there.

On the other hand, Kuntz didn’t really think anything he’d said had been all that bad. It wasn’t that rare for him to say things like that or hear them from other people. But words that would have been totally normal to say between rougher types sliced like a knife between the sunshiny relationship the two of them usually had.

Even now, when Kuntz remembered Allen’s guilty face and Sara’s fragile eyes, it made him want to scream. And he wasn’t even involved!

Didn’t you want to come down here because Sara’s important to you? So what are you doing hurting her? The thought made him grip Allen’s arm all the harder.

“What?” Allen asked him in an accusatory tone.

“Nothing. Come on, we’ve still got stuff to clean up.”

The rest of the Hunters would head out to explore soon. Seeing them off and minding the camp was part of their job too. Of course, “minding the camp” pretty much meant they could do whatever they wanted.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not using physical strengthening without thinking about it, are you?”

“I’m not.”

He made sure every morning before they trained.

Kuntz took out a bunch of stones from his storage pouch and piled them up on the ground.

“My shield was coming along pretty well yesterday, wasn’t it?”

“It was. I used to think shield magic was trash compared to physical strengthening or Sara’s barrier, but it actually seems pretty useful.”

Allen could actually be pretty crass when they talked like this, but that just made it obvious to Kuntz how careful he normally was to make sure he spoke to Sara kindly.

“Okay now, go ahead and throw. But...”

“Don’t use physical strengthening.”

No matter how much Kuntz repeated it, Allen didn’t get annoyed with him. He just did his work and helped Kuntz with his training. So, how had he messed things up with Sara so badly?

Allen was always watching Sara when she wasn’t watching him, and she hadn’t noticed. She always looked glum lately, and Kuntz wanted to ask him if he understood that he was the reason why.

“If I’m gonna be spending all this time worrying, I’d like it to at least be about myself...”

Kuntz vowed that if he ever had a bright and sunny girl who would cheer him on as a Hunter, he wouldn’t make her worry like Allen did.

Whether Sara was stressed or not, there were medicinal plants everywhere. And just like the Dark Mountain, there were rocky areas here and there where lots of mana herbs grew.

“The supreme healing herbs were the only rare plants I’ve found, but I’m sure Chris is finding all sorts of other stuff.”

Things were still going well on her third day of exploring. She’d been somewhat shocked to discover that she’d never had a fight with anyone before this morning, but she forgot about her worries when she was looking for medicinal plants while surrounded by nature.

“No, I haven’t forgotten...”

If they were fighting, then they just needed to make up. But Sara didn’t know how to do that since she’d never fought before. Would it all be over if she just apologized? She did think she’d been a little insistent, but she just couldn’t bring herself to apologize for that.

“This is getting to be such a pain.”

She was still worried about Allen, but he didn’t seem to be pushing himself for now. He didn’t have Sara by his side, but at least he had Kuntz.

“Ugh, whatever. I just need to focus on my work.”

Luckily, there was plenty for her to do. Sara was tired of worrying and had decided to give up for now. There were no eggs for her to cook today, so she didn’t need to be back early. As she concentrated on her map, she noticed the sun beginning to set and finally hurried back.

“You don’t got anything today?” Pyron asked her with hopeful eyes. He seemed to have decided the two of them were friends now.

She did still have some roast gargoyle left over, but there wasn’t enough for everyone to share, and they’d eaten all of the egg the day before. Plus, she’d worked until late today and was tired, so she was about to be honest and tell him she didn’t have anything when...

“Cut that out.” Allen stepped in between them to block Sara from Pyron’s sight. “Sara’s here surveying medicinal plants. She doesn’t get a bonus for additional work. Besides, the gargoyle and the egg came from the Wolveriés. Here.”

Allen handed Pyron a lunch box and then spun around and gave Sara one.

“Thanks.”

“Just doing my job.”

He went around handing out lunch boxes to all the Hunters as they returned.

“Tch... Has to get the last word in, does he?” Pyron grumbled, but he didn’t say anything else to Sara to her relief.

Sara’s personality did lend itself to getting her extra work. It was fine when she had energy to spare, but when she was tired, she really didn’t want to spend the energy. She took her lunch box and found Nelly and Chris, beginning her dinner.

“Yeah, you’re too nice, Sara. You could have just cooked that cockatrice egg for me, but you made all of it, since everyone else would want some. You could have just made it for me, though.”

“At least include me in that,” Chris said with a wry smile, but Sara understood Nelly’s “me” to mean “me and Chris,” so there were no worries there.

“I don’t have eggs or meat, but I have bush strawberries I picked the day before yesterday.”

“Let’s have some after our meal.”

Of the two, Chris was the one with the sweet tooth.

“I saw something that looked like a wintering citrus fruit too, but I didn’t pick any.”

“Hmm. Where was that? I’ll check it out when I cover that area.”

Sara’s family was right here. If she could do her work and value her family, then maybe she didn’t need anything else.

They might have been staying down in the dungeon to explore, but there weren’t many Hunters who would stay for a whole month without ever going back. The Hunters with family in particular tended to explore for five or six days, then go home for two days before returning.

Sara didn’t need to be as exact with her medicinal plant survey, so she explored at the same pace or even a bit faster than the Hunters.

“I want to go back up to the surface for a bit,” she told Nelly during dinner on their sixth day in the dungeon.

Nelly and Chris, incidentally, were planning on staying for at least two cycles and currently had no plans to go back to the surface yet.

“Tell father that we’re doing all right down here, then. Do you need to, though?”

One of the reasons she wanted to go home was to take a proper bath, but it seemed that wasn’t a priority for Nelly. Sara did have one other reason, though.

“Yeah. My backpack’s full.”

Sara’s backpack storage bag could fit three wyverns in it, and just today, the third one had crashed into Sara’s barrier.

“It’d be a waste if another one hit me.”

She could ask Nelly to store it for her, but it was really best to manage your own prey. Sara wasn’t a Hunter, so she’d always thought she didn’t need a ten-wyvern bag, but maybe it would be better if she had one. They were definitely expensive, but Sara could easily afford one with the money she had now.

“Oh, if that’s all you want...” Nelly turned to look toward Allen. “The Hunter’s Guild will buy stuff from you here. Well, they’re just looking after it until you go up to the surface, I guess.”

Sara turned as well and found Allen holding a storage bag. He must have heard what they were saying.

Even if they were only down here to explore, they’d make more money if they managed to hunt while they were at it. The Guild didn’t stop them from doing so. In fact, they encouraged it.

“Err...”

Since he was holding out the storage bag, he must have been telling her to get the wyverns out.

“I’ll do it. There’s no room here.” Kuntz plucked the bag from Allen’s hands and shooed the disgruntled Allen away.

“That’s okay, Kuntz. I’m going up anyway, so I’ll just sell them up there.”

“You sure? You don’t need to go back just for that.”

It seemed they were keeping a list of who hunted what, with accounts to be squared later on the surface.

“Oh, but if you’re going up, I think I’d like to go and come back with you. Is that okay?”

“Sure, I don’t mind...”

Sara admitted she’d brought up going back rather suddenly, but why was Kuntz so eager to go back too all of a sudden?

“We’ve got some real go-getters down here, so the storage bag the Guild gave us is almost full. I want to go exchange it. I could just give it to you or another Hunter, but I think it’d be better if I stayed responsible for it.”

“Okay. We can leave after you’re done with your work tomorrow morning, stay one night, and then come back. Does that work?”

“Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”

When they set out the next day, Sara wondered what Allen would do, but it seemed he’d be staying behind to watch the camp as usual.

“You’re worried he’ll push himself if he’s alone, aren’t you?”

As soon as the two of them took off for the surface, Kuntz guessed what she was thinking.

“Yeah...”

“It’s all over your face. You’ve seen how he’s been up until now. Does it still seem like he’ll push himself?”

Over the last six days, Allen had done his chores without complaining, trained with Hunters when they had time, and helped out with Kuntz’s practice. He didn’t use physical strengthening for any of it and Kuntz handled all the work that required magic.

“No...”

“Right?”

Sara had thought Kuntz wanted to go with her because of her barrier, but he asked her to only use it if they got into real trouble.

“He said he usually uses physical strengthening almost unconsciously, so it’s been hard to keep himself from using it. Especially when he spars with people.”

“He said that?”

She was sad for a moment that he wouldn’t say things like that to her since they were fighting, but then she realized that he probably wouldn’t even tell her something like that normally, which only made her feel worse.

How well did Sara even really know Allen?

“Don’t mope. I’m just trying to say that Allen’s not mad and that he’s taking care of himself like you told him to.”

Sara knew that, but having this wall in between the two of them preventing them from talking normally was making her miserable.

“I don’t know how much I can say... I guess I just want you to know that he’s moping too.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

It did make her feel a little better to know that she wasn’t the only one feeling this way. Still, she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so she changed the subject.

“By the way, Kuntz. Are you okay outside of my barrier?”

“Well, I dunno. If something happens, go ahead and use a supreme potion, all right?”

“Hey, now.”

That was not funny.

“I’m keeping an eye on the sky. I know I can’t handle a wyvern. I think a mountain wolf or a gargoyle would be pretty tough too. But I’d like to try my shield out against something like a hellhound or a horned rabbit. If I yell, ‘Barrier,’ could you let me in?”

“Okay, I got it.”

Just a few days ago, Kuntz would have said he couldn’t even get down to the bottom floor on his own, but he was hard at work trying to improve himself.

From then on, they kept their guards up and didn’t talk as much.

“Hah!”

“Eep!”

She noticed Kuntz moving out of the corner of her eye and saw a shield appear in front of his hand. At the same time, something large and gray bounced off of it. Kuntz stopped and shot a rock into the gray thing.

“Oh, it’s a horned rabbit.”

“Hold on, let me pick it up. Let’s keep going and stay careful.”

It looked to Sara like the horned rabbit was already dead before Kuntz even hit it with the stone.

“Was that...?”

“Yeah. It’s the shield magic we came up with that I’ve been practicing all this time with Allen. I was too scared to try it out on the bottom floor, but it looks like I can make use of it starting from around here.”

He made the shield appear so Sara could see it. It was a light brown and a lot smaller than it had been when they’d first thought it up.

“Practicing with Allen, I realized it’s easier for me to use it like a physical strengthening-enhanced fist than like your barrier.”

“Can’t you just use physical strengthening, then?”

That seemed a little backward to Sara.

“I’m a caster. I’m too scared to hit monsters directly.”

“Scared? I mean, I guess I get it...”

Sara protected Kuntz’s left side, so he only had to look out for his front, back, and right.

“Whoa! A flame bat!”

And above, of course.

They must have looked like easy prey. They were targeted by more monsters than usual when it was just the two of them.

“They’re weak monsters, but I can make plenty of money if I hunt enough of them. At my level, this is enough. Actually, it’s more than enough.”

Kuntz finished off monsters with stones and blew them away with wind magic when they dodged his shield. His fighting style was varied and fascinating to watch.

“It works just like I thought it would. It’s all thanks to Allen for tirelessly chucking all those rocks at me.”

Kuntz seemed satisfied when they took a break in a safe zone on the way.

“You don’t run out of mana? Chris and Vince said it uses a ton of mana to make a shield.”

“Well, I only make it for a split second. I haven’t tried changing the size or making it somewhere other than in front of my hand, but the way I use it now doesn’t use all that much mana.”

Kuntz opened and closed his hands a few times. He must have been thinking about the sensation of forming his shield.

“You still need muscles to hit things with physical strengthening, but your barrier can reflect an enemy’s strength right back at them. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t use that much mana.”

Sara was scared of monsters, so she put her barrier up in all directions. She had never even thought of using it like Kuntz did. Maybe Sara could learn a thing or two from Kuntz. Was it pathetic that she only ever used it like a balloon or a big shield?

“Hmm...”

Sara tried making a shield like Kuntz did outside of the barrier protecting her.

“You’re making two barriers right now, right, Sara?”

“Yeah.”

“You may not realize this, but that’s really amazing. I realized it while practicing, but it takes everything I have just to make one. How many do you think you could make at once?”

“Well, I’ve done three before...”

How many could she make? Sara tried making more shields.

“Two, three...” She could handle that much. “Four, five, six, seven. Oh.”

Outside of the barrier surrounding her, all the other shields shattered like breaking glass.

“Wow. That’s eight including your original barrier.”

“I guess I can’t maintain them if I can’t see them. I don’t think I’d be able to make one behind me.”

“That’s not a problem if your barrier covers every direction. The shield is more for attacking than defense. Maybe I’ll try making two next. What do you think, Allen? Oh...”

Allen would normally be with them, but he wasn’t now. The two of them sighed and stood together, starting back toward the surface.

After deciding to focus on her work, Sara cycled through six days down in the dungeon and one night up on the surface. Before a month had passed, she was almost finished with her map. Work was fun, and by her third trip to the surface, she was able to speak to Allen more or less normally through Kuntz.

She didn’t practice shield magic with Kuntz anymore, but he seemed to get a lot better at it when he trained with Allen, maybe because of the practical experience he’d gotten. Kuntz was careful, so she assumed when this job was done, he’d start using this skill against weaker monsters and gradually work up to stronger ones.

Sara was relieved by the thought that her normal life would be back after another six days of wandering around in the depths of the dungeon. Even if it felt like the Dark Mountain down here, sleeping in tents in the safe zone made her feel a little claustrophobic. Simply put, she was getting tired of it.

Sara returned to the surface and headed straight to the Apothecary’s Guild.

“I’ve got medicinal plants.”

“Sara! Nice work!”

Though she was focusing on her assigned task, she couldn’t help picking plants with high demand like mana herbs when she came across them. Partway through she decided she’d just do her investigation and gather, so she was already getting plenty done down there. And when she got back, the Apothecary’s Guild was more than happy enough to buy the plants from her.

Sara held her hands out to stop her coworkers, who were starting to creep toward her.

“I just got back from the dungeon, so I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your distance!”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’re not some smelly Hunter.”

Sara always wiped herself down and changed her clothes in the dungeon, so she wasn’t exactly dirty, but she still didn’t want anyone getting near her before she could have a bath. Call it her maidenly nature.

“Sara’s here?” Caren hurried out of the guildmaster’s office. “You’re not pushing yourself, are you?”

“I’m okay. I got tons of mana herbs again.”

Sara set her gathering basket down with a thud. Seeing the overjoyed looks on her coworkers’ faces make her just as happy.

“By the way, Sara, I have something I wanted to talk to you about. We could do it here, but...could you come into the office with me?”

“Okay.”

It didn’t sound like anything serious. Sara headed into the guildmaster’s office, thinking she probably just wanted her to gather some specific kind of plant from the bottom floor.

“Here.” As soon as they got inside, Caren handed her a letter that had been sitting on her desk. “It’s from Noel. There’s another one, but I think it’s best you read that one first.”

It was a little strange that it had come here instead of to the mansion. Sara opened up the envelope, which was much more practical than the ones her marriage proposals came in, and looked down at Noel’s beautiful handwriting. That figures.

“Let’s see here...”

It was a reply to the letter Sara had sent him.

“Basically, supreme healing herbs and supreme potions are rare in the capital too, so he’s interested in them. He’d like to help out with asking people who have used supreme potions about their experiences, but he wants me to participate too so we can work on it together. In other words...”

“He wants you to come to the capital.”

Maybe it was a bit rude of her to think Noel would just do the work on his own and share it with her.

“Here’s the other one.” This time she handed her a rather formal-looking envelope.

“It’s from the Apothecary’s Guild in the capital. What’s this?”

She opened this one and found a much shorter letter than Noel’s. It was a request.

Caren tapped the letter with her finger. “This is an official request. It’s the same kind Chris gets during migrating dragon season. It’s just like a request from the Hunter’s Guild.”

“Huh... A request?”

She got a bad feeling about this but read the letter anyway.

“‘Supply request for supreme healing herbs. One hundred minimum, no maximum. We’d like as many as possible as long as it won’t disrupt the supply in the dungeon. In addition to the payment for the herbs, we’ll pay for travel expenses to the capital and provide our full support in the questioning of those who have experience using supreme potions.’ Wha...?”

Sara looked up at Caren, lost.

“I reported to them that Chris had found supreme healing herbs and our apothecaries had made some supreme potions. Apothecary’s Guilds always want supreme herbs and potions on hand in case something happens, so it’s best to share where you can find them.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“I didn’t think they’d take action this fast, though. And the request for you is obviously because of your letter to Noel.”

“Ugh... Yeah.”

No matter how interested Noel was, she supposed he couldn’t just investigate on his own without going through the Apothecary’s Guild. Sara herself had asked both the Apothecary’s Guild and the Hunter’s Guild here in Hydrangea for help.

It took a long time to travel to the capital and back, and she was right in the middle of another request from the Hunter’s Guild at the moment, so she had no idea what to do. Then there was the fact that it hadn’t been a full month yet since Allen had used the supreme potion.

She hung her head, and Caren asked her a question that almost suggested she could read Sara’s mind. “Is Allen pushing himself?”

“I don’t think he is. At least from what I can tell.”

“That’s good.”

She was grateful that Caren didn’t ask any more than that, but now that she thought about it, that was probably only because she knew the two of them were fighting. She was the type of person who would normally ask all sorts of follow-up questions and not simply end the conversation there.

It felt stifling that a simple problem between the two of them was common knowledge not only to the Hunters down in the depths of the dungeon but even the people at the Apothecary’s Guild too.

“How long do you think that request from the Hunter’s Guild will take you to finish?”

“Umm, I think I’ll be done the next time I come back up. Chris said their part will take them a little more time.”

“I see. Well, I know it’s a lot of work for you, but I’d personally like it if you accepted this request, Sara.”

She could always say no like Nelly had back on the Dark Mountain.

“Your proposal was really fantastic. It made me wish there was some sort of guide to the use of supreme potions around back when I was younger.”

“Yeah...”

She didn’t think it would become such a big deal, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she thought of it as doing some joint research with Noel.

“Plus, you know, those girls are there in the capital, right?”

“Oh yeah! I’ll get to see Mona and Heather!”

Mona had gotten married last year, but she was still working as an apothecary. The two of them had come to Hydrangea to study, so Caren knew them well.

“It doesn’t say anything about hurrying, and it could take a while to gather more than a hundred supreme healing herbs, right?”

It could, but it won’t, was left implied.

“You can take some time to rest first after your current request is finished, but give it some thought.”

“No.” Sara was grateful for Caren’s suggestion, but she looked up at her resolutely. “There are big fields of supreme healing herbs down on the last floor, so it won’t take long to gather one hundred of them. I’ll collect them before the next time I come back up to the surface, then I’ll go to the capital.”

“Sara...” Caren swallowed whatever it was she wanted to say.

This wasn’t a request anyone was forcing on her. Noel and the Apothecary’s Guild in the capital had only taken action because Sara had been proactive herself. She wanted to gather up the information and organize it properly.

Making up her mind, Sara returned to the mansion and reported to Ri about it right away.

“I see...” Ri stroked his beard, looking somewhat disappointed. “Sightseeing in the capital together with Sara, eh? Well, it’s about time you started wearing some jewelry, and it could be fun sampling the capital’s confectionaries when you have time.”

“Wait a second, I’m going for work.”

How did he get on the subject of sightseeing? Sara gave Ri an exasperated look.

“I said when you have time. But considering Hydrangea’s current situation, I can’t exactly leave, so I suppose you’ll have to go on your own. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“It’s fine.”

She was grateful that he didn’t oppose her going there for work or leaving right after she finished her current work.

“You can use one of House Wolverié’s carriages. I’ll send some servants with you as well. I wonder if we have time to have some new dresses made?”

“Wait a second!” It was her second pumping of the breaks of the conversation. “It was a sudden decision, so I think I’ll just take a regular public carriage. Besides, I’m always rushing here and there for emergencies, so I’ve never taken a leisurely trip somewhere by myself.”

“I don’t know about a woman like you traveling alone, though... Could you wait for Neffie to finish her work? Or you could take Allen with you.”

The highways were maintained well, so she didn’t hear about bandit attacks and the like too often. There would be no need to worry about monsters as long as they stayed on the road too. Still, young women didn’t tend to travel alone all that much, so he was worried.

“I’ll stay in the Wolverié townhouse while I’m in the capital, of course. I just want to do something different for a change.”

“Well, I suppose it will be a good experience. And you are the girl who can repel wyverns, after all.”

He seemed to really like seeing her take down a wyvern in person recently and brought it up whenever he got the chance. It was a little embarrassing for Sara.

Wolveriés really valued freedom. Nelly and Elm were the same. Part of it was simply their nature, but it was likely also because Ri let them do whatever they wanted. In the end, he respected Sara’s wishes and allowed her to make her own decisions as well.

She decided the next time she came back from the dungeon, she’d take a day off to rest and head straight for the capital after that. And a new ten-wyvern storage pouch would join her on her journey.

She penned a letter to Noel, organized her things in her pouches, and climbed into the bed she hadn’t slept in for the last six days.

Her heart should have been swelling with anticipation for her new job, but it was aching instead, because she knew she was running away.

“I don’t want to worry or walk on eggshells anymore...”

She didn’t know why, but the thought of going back to Allen like nothing had happened after all this time seemed to hurt more than it had when he’d snapped at her in the guildhall.

“We’re living together as a matter of convenience right now, but Nelly and Chris will go off and start their own family one day. I’ve got to be able to stand on my own in this world. I’ve been way too spoiled up until now.”

Spoiled by Nelly. Spoiled by Allen. By both of the people who had been with her ever since Rosa.

“I want to go somewhere where no one knows about me and Allen.”

Somewhere where people weren’t constantly trying to get the two of them to make up in some roundabout way.

Sara was about to run off in the wrong direction entirely, but there was no one around to stop her.

After finishing her survey of the medicinal plants on the lowest floor of the dungeon, Sara found herself unable to tell Nelly and Chris about the request she’d received. There were a dozen or so Hunters milling about in the safe zone. Even if they talked inside their tent, someone might hear them.

There were so many supreme healing herbs down here that even after she gathered twice what the request had asked for, two hundred of them, their numbers didn’t seem reduced at all, so Chris didn’t even notice how many she’d gathered.

She assumed they wanted so many of them for the same reason she’d gathered them in Hydrangea: so the capital’s many apothecaries could get some experience using them. But if she brought too many in, they ran the risk of using them even when they didn’t need to simply because they had so many. Maybe she was thinking too hard about it, but two hundred was what Sara settled on. Her other excuse was that she’d been hurrying, so that was all she was able to gather.

Eventually, the day of Sara’s return to the surface came.

“We should be finished exploring in another six days or so. We spotted a big field of silver dragonmint, so that was a good find. You did well, Sara. Get some rest.”

Chris seemed satisfied with the work Sara had done too.

“Umm, listen...”

This was her only chance to speak up, but Nelly threw her arms around her before she could.

“Sara! I’ll miss you, but rest well, okay? And don’t forget to deliver that cockatrice egg to the head chef.”

“Yeah, I will.”

Nelly was really letting her appetite get the best of her more and more these days.

“Sara.”

Allen called out to her, something that didn’t happen often these days.

“Err...be careful on your way back.”

“I will. Keep up the good work, Allen.”

Their eyes met for the first time in a long while, but Sara quickly looked away.

It had almost been a month since Allen had taken the supreme potion. Without any more reminders from Sara, Allen had refrained from using mana or physical strengthening at all this whole time. He’d been a real champ, and probably wouldn’t have to deal with any lasting side effects thanks to that.

Maybe there had been no reason to worry in the first place. Then she wouldn’t have been snapped at, and they wouldn’t have to deal with this awkward atmosphere.

If it was going to be this painful, maybe she didn’t want any close friends.

Sara decided to focus on her work in the capital and go right home afterward, and when she went up to the surface, she didn’t turn back to the people waving goodbye to her even once.

Interlude: Frustration

Kuntz watched it all with a strange sense of unacceptance. Frustration, you could even say.

Nelly must have felt the same way, as she watched the exit that Sara had just disappeared through with folded arms.

“Do you think I made her mad going on about the egg like that?”

“Oh, come on. You know Sara wouldn’t get angry about something like that.”

Kuntz wasn’t fighting with Sara, so his relationship with Nelly wasn’t particularly awkward either. He poked fun at her without holding back as he always did.

“She seemed different from her usual self somehow, though...”

“Mm... I feel the same way.”

“Is it ’cause of that?” Nelly glanced over at Allen.

As far as Kuntz was concerned, Nelly was a frank, kind person, but ever since things got awkward between Sara and Allen, she had been firmly on Sara’s side and had put a bit of distance between herself and Allen. Of course, though they might have been mentor and apprentice, it wasn’t like they had been particularly clingy with one another before or anything.

As for Allen, he was cleaning up with a sunny smile on his face. Probably thinking something like, I was able to talk face-to-face with Sara for the first time in a while, Kuntz thought exasperatedly.

“Sure, I mean, it’s definitely Allen’s fault, but that’s been going on for a while now. This seems... Hmm, I’m not sure how to say it.”

Neither he nor Nelly could put the strange feeling they felt into words.

“She’s hiding something,” Chris said, joining the conversation.

“Hiding something? Sara is? From me?”

“No, not just from you, Nef. She looked like she wanted to say something to me too.”

“Now that you mention it, I feel like she hasn’t been very cheerful lately. I just thought it was Allen’s fault.”

Nelly finally came right out and called it Allen’s fault.

This time, Allen joined in. “It might be my fault, but that’ll all be over soon.”

“What’ll be over?” Nelly turned to Allen, arms still crossed.

“It’s almost been a month since I took the supreme potion.”

They all counted the days when he said so and realized he was right.

“Just like Sara told me, I didn’t use mana or physical strengthening for a month. I kept notes on how I was feeling every day too. I paid attention to how much mana I felt in my body and what it was doing without using it, so Sara could use that information.” Allen clenched his fist. “When I give her that, I’ll finally be able to apologize to her. Then everything will be back to normal.”

Kuntz had thought he was being rather detached after insisting on coming down here. He was relieved to find out that that wasn’t the case, and that Allen was actually thinking about Sara every day.

“Oh, so green. Green, green, green. Greener than green grass locusts.”

Someone had snuck up on them from behind. It was Pyron.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He was stuck doing chores now, but Allen was stronger than Pyron normally. The other man might have been older, but Allen didn’t like being looked down on, so he replied with a bit of an attitude.

“I’m saying it’s green of you to expect her to forgive you after all this time just ’cause you say you’re sorry.”

“What’s it have to do with you?”

True, it didn’t have anything to do with Pyron.

“Our precious Sara has been down in the dumps for a whole month. Whose fault do you think that is?”

“Our precious Sara?” That got Nelly’s attention. “Well, you’re right about one thing. She doesn’t belong to you one little bit, but she is a precious girl. No, a woman.”

“Right? How awkward do you think it’s been for all of us having to be in between you two for this last month?”

He could share how he really felt now because Sara wouldn’t be coming back to the camp anymore.

“Besides, what reason does Sara have to choose you after you’ve already fought like this?”

“I’m Sara’s best friend.”

“Does a best friend act so cold?”

That shut Allen up. Why hadn’t anyone gone exploring after Sara left for the surface, anyway? Kuntz looked around and found almost all of the Hunters in the safe zone standing around Allen and Pyron, watching their argument. That was just how interested everyone was in Sara and Allen’s situation.

“If it was bothering you all so much, why weren’t you more considerate to Sara?” Kuntz grumbled and everyone turned to glare at him.

“With the brave face she was putting on? What were we supposed to do? If my daughter was still soldiering on as best as she could with a look like that on her face, I’d go and smack the other guy.”

This came from a Hunter the same age as Nelly and Chris.

Kuntz laughed dryly. If no one else was going to take Allen’s side, he supposed he should. He was just as young as she was, after all.

“Besides, is there even a guy who can measure up to Sara? She treats mountain wolves like they’re her pets, and even wyverns avoid her. She’s the only one down here doing her job like it’s the easiest thing in the world. There’s not a Hunter who’s stronger than her anywhere.”

Why were they talking about a guy who could measure up to her now?

“No matter how strong a Hunter gets, they’ll never compare to an Invited like Sara. You should have apologized from the start.”

“Hey, that’s not right.”

At some point, the conversation left Allen and Nelly behind completely and just became a chat among Hunters about how strong Sara was.

“I’m not listening to this,” Allen murmured, moving to clean up the breakfast dishes. “I’m apologizing to her. And I’ll do it as many times as it takes for her to forgive me.”

If he’d shown that determination the day after their fight started, then they wouldn’t have had to fight at all, but men were creatures that needed an impetus to apologize.

After all was said and done, Hunters always wanted to cheer on their younger protégés, so in the next six days without Sara, all the Hunters besides Nelly and Chris came around to Allen’s side, alleviating Kuntz’s fears somewhat.

Three days after Sara left, Allen went up to Nelly and Chris after dinner with a solemn look on his face.

“Chris.” Kuntz casually followed him over and was surprised when he addressed Chris instead of Nelly. “Today makes a month. Do you think I can use physical strengthening now?”

“Hmm.” Chris responded with the eyes of an apothecary, but there seemed to be something else in them that Kuntz didn’t usually see. “Well, normally, the one who’s been monitoring your condition from the start, Sara, should decide that.”

“Right.”

“It would have been a part of Sara’s growth as an apothecary. It’s not right to say this to a patient, but as her friend, I want you to keep in mind that your stubbornness has robbed her of that opportunity.”

Chris gave Allen a thorough checkup, and right when he was about to make his prognosis...

“Wait, Chris.” Nelly, who had been watching from beside them, spoke up.

“What is it, Nef?” It seemed Chris hadn’t been expecting the interruption.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Allen every day too, so I think I know what you’re going to say. But just like you said earlier, I think Sara should make the call herself.”

“I see.” Chris thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “He’ll see Sara in three days, so he should wait until then is what you’re saying.”

“That’s right,” Nelly said swiftly.

Allen was about to argue, but Kuntz hurriedly stopped him.

“Are you in a position to be talking back to us?” It was rather harsh for something coming from Nelly. “I know you’ve been training without using physical strengthening. I’ve been getting reports from my brother Elm. Do you think you’re in better shape physically now than you were before your injury?”

Nelly had seemed to be keeping her distance from Allen, but she was still paying close attention to him. Realizing that, Allen nodded straightforwardly.

“I think I am. Elm said I was relying too much on physical strengthening and not using my muscles enough. I feel like I have a better range of motion now, and my punches are sharper.”

“You want to use physical strengthening with your new physique. And you want to show Sara that you’re stronger than you were before. Is that more or less it?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?” Allen glared at Nelly in the same way that he’d looked at Sara when he’d snapped at her.

“I’ll be frank. No matter how much you train, you’ll never be stronger than Sara. To Sara, you’re the same now as you were before your injury. There’s no point in trying to be strong for Sara.”

Kuntz was shocked she’d go that far.

“You swore to protect Sara when I became your mentor, didn’t you?”

“I did. That feeling hasn’t changed.”

Kuntz never knew Sara had anything to do with Nelly becoming Allen’s mentor.

“I’ve been wondering ever since then exactly how a guy who’s weaker than Sara is supposed to protect her.”

If you took her words at face value, then ever since then and even now, Nelly never thought Allen had the strength to protect Sara.

“Allen, what is it that you want to protect Sara from, exactly? She was already repelling wyverns five years ago.”

“I...!” Allen held out his hands to Nelly and clenched them into fists. “Sara’s strong, but not on the inside. She’s a normal girl. But there are people who only see her as an Invited and try to use her. People who take advantage of her kindness to get whatever they can out of her. I...” Allen unclenched his fists, letting them fall powerlessly to his sides. “I want to be at Sara’s side to protect her, so people like that don’t hurt her. I wanted to let Sara be a normal girl no matter how strong she is.”

“Are you doing that now?”

“Ugh...”

“You can’t answer that, can you? Because you’re the one hurting Sara more than anyone else right now.”

Confronted with the harsh truth, Allen could no longer say anything at all.

“You want him to do it over again and finish it, right, Nef?”

“Exactly.”

Do what over again? Kuntz couldn’t see how that had anything to do with what they were talking about.

“Allen.”

“Ugh...yes?”

Allen looked like he could cry at any moment. Kuntz was sure he’d never admit that, though.

“Sara’s important to me, but you’re important to me too.”

Kuntz’s heart ached. If it were him, he knew that comment would have made him cry.

“If you could do it over again, what would you do over?”

“Being mean to Sara.”

“Then what is it you should do?”

“Apologize to her and let her observe my progress properly for a month.”

That was when Kuntz finally realized the reason for his frustration. Sara wouldn’t care at all that Allen had gotten stronger after all his training. If he’d gone and apologized like he said he was going to, Kuntz was sure that it wouldn’t have healed the pain in her heart.

“Impressive as always, Nelly.”

“You think so?”

Nelly looked genuinely glad to hear Kuntz’s compliment.

“Impressive as always, my Nef.”

“I’m not yours.”

Kuntz smiled wryly when Nelly went stone-faced a second later.

Kuntz was sure Allen wanted to use physical strengthening right away and go explore the floor with the other Hunters if possible, but he endured the urge for the next three days and went up to the surface excitedly, only to hear this from the receptionist at the Hunter’s Guild:

“Sara? She went to the capital for a request.”

“Why...?”

That was the first time Kuntz had ever seen someone actually sink to the ground.

The Guild receptionist had no way of knowing the details of the request Sara was on, so Allen and Kuntz headed to Ri’s mansion with Nelly and Chris to find out what she was up to.

Ri nodded in satisfaction when he heard that the exploration of the new floor was finished and received the report on the monsters and medicinal plants that could be found there.

“Good work this past month. Once this is all wrapped up, I’ll be able to fully retire and focus on supporting Thedias. It’s a good opportunity.”

He was dropping a bomb on them with a smile on his face. Kuntz shuddered when he thought about how Thedias, who was always running around as the southern region’s Guild Director, would feel about this news.

“I don’t think you need to be in any rush to retire, father. Why the hurry?” Nelly asked curiously and Ri answered somewhat restlessly.

“Well, because I want to be able to freely take trips with my granddaughter, of course.”

“Your granddaughter? Oh, Sara?”

Allen’s ears pricked up at that.

“She ran off, saying she had a request to take care of, but if I weren’t the lord, I would have been able to go to the capital with her to sightsee... And Thed’s children will become independent at some point and want to travel to all sorts of places too, I imagine.”

“Right, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Normally, Sara would have told me about something like this, but she didn’t say anything this time, so I didn’t find out she’d left until I was back at the Guild.”

“Oh. Really? She did tell me she was going to go on her own without waiting for you to finish your work, but I didn’t think she wouldn’t tell you about it. Maybe she was being considerate since you just got married. What about you, Allen? She didn’t say anything to you?”

Ri was surprised, and when he saw Allen hanging his head, he said somewhat teasingly, “What, you too, Allen? Ha ha ha. Did you have a fight or something?”

Ri must have picked up on something by the silence that followed his question. He cleared his throat. “Is that what Sara was so down about? Well, I’m sure there’s no need to worry. Sara’s an adult, and she’ll be staying in the Wolverié townhouse in the capital.”

“The Wolverié townhouse.”

That seemed to be all Allen picked up on. He immediately stood.

“Wait, wait. Wait, Allen. Let’s get the whole story first. We don’t even know what kind of job she went to the capital for. And what are you going to do if you two miss each other?”

Kuntz could just see Allen running off to the capital to apologize to Sara as soon as he could, so he rushed to stop him.

Ri gave Allen a curious look. “Miss each other? What’s wrong, Allen? You’ve been apart for a time on jobs before, haven’t you? You’re a Hunter and an apothecary. You won’t always be working together. She might have needed your help when she was a girl, but I can’t imagine she needs it now.”

Kuntz wanted to scream. That was the problem!

“I’m Sara’s patient,” Allen said suddenly. “I can’t use physical strengthening without her permission. And I can’t work as a Hunter if I can’t use physical strengthening. I can’t make a living if I can’t work. So I’m going to see her.”

Nelly looked down and made a strange choked sound, her shoulders trembling.

“I know I was the one who told you not to use physical strengthening until Sara gave you permission, but...”

Kuntz wanted to believe that Nelly’s voice wasn’t trembling because she was trying not to laugh. He was relieved that Allen wasn’t looking at her, so he probably hadn’t noticed.

Chris had been keeping quiet, but he spoke up now, exasperated. “Allen, how many wyverns can fit in that pouch?”

“...Ten.”

“Did you borrow money to buy it?”

“No.”

Chris sighed and elegantly crossed his long legs. “Who was it who said Nef and I should hurry up and buy a house already?”

“...Me.”

Kuntz had no idea he’d said that. Surely it was none of his business.

“And who said, ‘I’m still in my teens and even I could afford a house’?”

“Me.”

Chris’s sarcastic questions were no doubt to imply that Allen had no need to work right away in order to earn money. To be honest, even Kuntz had enough savings to buy a splendid house of his own just from teaming up with Allen, so he imagined Allen had even more. Neither of them had to spend much money on their hunting equipment and they lived frugally, so it was easy to save up.

But that was no way to talk to a noble, even if they were close.

Allen was the strongest young Hunter in Hydrangea. He might not have been the most skilled, but there were hardly even any veteran Hunters who could beat him. He succeeded often when he hunted and hardly ever failed, yet he didn’t brag about himself. Kuntz might have been biased as his friend, but he thought Allen was a pretty decent guy.

That was why Kuntz had honestly been wondering this whole time what he was doing away from Sara when the wall collapsed in the depths of the dungeon in the first place. The usual Allen would have been where Kuntz was, between Nelly and Sara, to protect Sara, even if he was interested in talking to Elm.

He hadn’t realized that until now. Kuntz took a slow, deep breath. If he didn’t he was worried he’d grab Allen by the collar and ask him what he’d been doing back then.

Allen had been arrogant. That was why he’d been so bold with Chris.

He was arrogant then too. When he said he could protect Sara.

Even after being injured, he hadn’t realized that and hadn’t reflected. He was still arrogant.

He was saying stupid things because he believed that if he could just see Sara, she would forgive him.

The frustration in Kuntz’s heart that had faded began to rear its head again. But Nelly and Chris didn’t seem angry at all. They were just exasperated and amused, so they’d probably let him go to the capital like he wanted to.

“I understand that you want to see her no matter what, but Chris and I and Kuntz have work to do here. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

If they stood by and let him go, Allen would take action on his own and Sara would forgive him. Everyone was acting like the problem was already solved, and Kuntz was starting to get nervous. He had a bad feeling that if Allen went to the capital right now, their relationship wasn’t going to be fixed.

“Hey, Allen.”

Kuntz felt a little bad about throwing a stone into the peaceful atmosphere.

“If you go to the capital and apologize and Sara doesn’t forgive you, what are you gonna do?”

“Huh?”

There. He wasn’t even considering the possibility.

“It’s Sara, so I’m sure she’ll just say it’s fine and she’s sorry for being so persistent, right?”

Kuntz could picture it himself.

“Even if she says that, it doesn’t necessarily mean she feels that way, though. Maybe she’ll remember how it hurt when you were cold to her every time she sees you. What if that makes her distant, so she doesn’t have to see you?”

“Why would you say something like that?” Allen looked pained. “What should I do, then? I feel like if I stay in Hydrangea, then she might decide she doesn’t care about me anymore.”

“Probably.”

“Then...!”

Allen needed to think about this because it concerned him, but Kuntz was annoyed that he had to think about it as well.

“This is what I think.” Kuntz listed all the things he’d been considering. “Everyone saw you as the victim because you almost died. So maybe it didn’t bother anyone, but there was a problem from the very beginning.”

“What do you mean?” Allen asked, his mouth hanging open.

“You were so interested in Elm when you met him that you forgot about protecting Sara, didn’t you?”

Allen’s lips moved to say Kuntz was wrong, but he didn’t actually make any sound.

“You weren’t at Sara’s side, so I was standing in between you two. So I could run to Sara right away if something happened. What would have happened if your positions had been reversed in that moment?”

After asking the question, Kuntz realized that Sara had her barrier up, so she probably would have been fine.

“Sara could have been the one buried under all those gargoyles because you weren’t watching her. Not that that would have been a problem for her, I’m sure,” he said, being honest.

“In the end, Sara’s fine whether you’re there or not, but after making a fuss about protecting her, you hurt her with your stubbornness, and now you’re trying to go back to following her around all the time. Doesn’t that make you kind of a creep?”

He’d said too much. He knew he was saying too much, but Kuntz couldn’t stop himself.

“If you go to the capital the way you are now, you’ll only bother Sara. All I can say is that I think you should figure out why you want her to forgive you before you go.”

The silence that fell after that hurt.

“Okay, I’m going home.”

Kuntz beat a hasty retreat from Ri’s mansion before anyone could say anything in response, crouching down and clutching his head as soon as he got outside the building.

“I said I was gonna be on his side, didn’t I? Why am I becoming his biggest enemy now? Did I just deal the final blow to him? I’m like a supreme potion. Ha ha ha.”

He’d stuck with Allen for a whole month to support him, but he’d ruined it all at the end.

“Aaah, what do I do if the two of them never make up because of me?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Kuntz leaped up when he heard a voice from behind him.

“Allen.”

“I’m sorry.”

Allen bowed his head to Kuntz sincerely.

“What’s that for? It’s not me you’re supposed to apologize to, right?”

“No. First, I need to apologize to you, Kuntz. I’m really sorry. And...” Allen looked up, eyes a little tearful. “Thanks. For everything. From the beginning.”

“What?”

He felt a stinging in the back of his nose, so Kuntz just looked up to the sky.

Allen plopped down next to Kuntz.

“I didn’t realize. When’d I become so arrogant and nasty?”

“Hunters are supposed to be arrogant. And you’re not nasty. I’m sure Chris and Nelly don’t think so either. But...”

“Yeah.”

Kuntz wasn’t sure how to continue.

“It’s different for Sara.”

“Yeah.”

Kuntz sat down next to Allen, feeling like he’d said what was most important to say.

Allen was looking up at the sky, so Kuntz followed suit.

“I can get stronger, but it’s for me. It shouldn’t be for Sara.”

“Yeah.”

“I just need to remember that I want to treat Sara right.”

“Probably.”

Kuntz didn’t care why he was having the sudden change of heart. As long as he was facing the fact that he’d been arrogant, that was enough for Kuntz.

“I’m going to the capital. I’m gonna go and apologize to Sara.”

“Of course. This is all your fault, after all.”

“Yeah.”

It was a sincere response, like the stubborn Allen from this last whole month had never even existed.

Allen declined Ri’s offer to use the Wolverié carriage as well, and decided to set out to the capital in a regular carriage the next day.

“Why are you coming with, Elm?”

“The new floor was the same as the Dark Mountain. I’m bored of it.”

For some reason, Elm was joining Allen on his journey. He hadn’t been involved in the discussion back in Ri’s mansion at all, so Kuntz had thought he had no interest in any of that.

“And I’m not done looking after my student.”

“When’d you become his student?!”

The two of them had been sparring every day down in the dungeon, but Kuntz had no idea they’d formalized the relationship. Allen was rather cunning.

“I’m thinking of visiting someone I know in the capital. My father tried to teach you some swordplay, but I think you should start over from the very beginning with basic physical training. I’ve got a letter of introduction for you. After all, Neffie, me, your uncle...everyone who’s ever taught you has been rather bad at it.”

When you wanted to become a Hunter, you could get an older Hunter as a mentor, but Kuntz had never heard about anyone who trained Hunters from the ground up. That was why Kuntz had learned magic by seeing other people’s magic and using trial and error, and Allen had learned from his uncle. He had simply thought that was the way things were done.

“There are people who teach you the fundamentals of physical strengthening, huh? I used to live in the capital, but I never knew that.”

“There are. The students are usually twelve to sixteen, but I don’t think you’ll be turned away just for being older. You should learn with some people around your own age.”

“I see... So it’ll take some time just traveling there and back, and Allen will probably stay in the capital for a while...”

Kuntz considered how he would hunt in the meantime. Since he had the opportunity now, he wanted to try out more of that shield magic he’d come up with with Sara. While he was considering whether to descend slowly from the first floor or form a temporary party, he noticed Elm looking at him and fidgeting.

“What is it?”

“I have two letters of introduction.”

“Huh?”

“Are you ready?”

“What?! I never said I was coming! Was I even invited?”

When Kuntz thought about how much Allen had put him through already in the last month, he started to feel lightheaded.

“So you’re done being stubborn and now you’re being selfish, is that it? Ha ha ha.”

He had to admit he was worried, but he figured it would be better for Allen to go by himself, so he’d been planning on seeing him off with a smile even if he’d be a little lonely.

“Kuntz! Are you ready? We would have never believed we’d be training with rookie knights before, huh?”

He never thought Allen would just assume he was coming with him. And he didn’t know it was rookie knights they’d be training with.

“I haven’t heard any of this! I think I might know how Sara feels now.”

It was pretty rough getting roped into things.

Chapter 3: Sara the Apothecary

While Allen and Kuntz were preparing to depart, Sara was still en route to the capital. The carriages running daily routes to the capital were surprisingly small, with only enough room for maybe ten people to fit inside, but Sara’s wasn’t very full at all. Storage bags sat on the unoccupied seats like extra passengers.

“We’ll be staying at the Lily of the Valley Inn next to the Guild today,” the kindly coachman told her when they arrived in Quista, the halfway point to the capital.

“Nngh... I’m all stiff.”

Sara put away the cushion she’d been sitting on and got out of the carriage, stretching.

Though service to the capital was regular, there weren’t many people traveling all the way there, so the carriage made several stops along the way, like a bus. As a result, there might have been some small talk between passengers, but people didn’t tend to pry about the others’ business. Some people riding with her were also paying to stay at the inn tonight, but some weren’t.

Sara was enjoying the freedom that came with being on her own for the first time in a long while.

“I wonder when the last time I was alone like this was. The first time was when Nelly went missing from the Dark Mountain. And then...”

She’d gone down into town and met Allen, and then she was together with Allen. Then Nelly came back and she was together with Nelly. Then she’d traveled to Camellia with Chris, Ted, and Allen. Ted stayed in Camellia, but then they met Kuntz.

She went over her journey across Trilgaia like it was a board game and she was proceeding space by space.

They got to Hydrangea and started staying at Ri’s mansion. The next year, she went to the capital with the Wolveriés. Then they came back and the next year she met up with Haruto and Bradley again when the continental tortoise showed up. The next year, she met a new Invited in Gardenia, and that brought her to this year.

“I haven’t...been alone...since back then...”

The first thing she felt was gratitude. If she hadn’t met Nelly on the Dark Mountain, that would have been the end of her short life. And for almost the entire time since then, Sara had had someone at her side.

Of course, at seventeen, she would have still been living with her parents back in Japan, and there weren’t a lot of people who were completely alone in this world either. But Sara had experienced living alone before.

She’d enjoyed her job, but it still gave her stress, and more than anything else, she had been exhausted all the time. But that sediment of exhaustion that was constantly building up in her had been eased slightly by the time she could be alone, not having to worry about how to act around other people.

“No one here knows I’m an Invited or an apothecary. I don’t stand out at all, so I don’t draw anyone’s attention. How nice.”

“I wouldn’t say that. It’s pretty unusual for a young girl to be traveling on her own. Let’s head to the inn together,” said the driver.

“Oh, thank you.” Sara bowed her head, incredibly embarrassed that she’d been overheard.

“I suppose you are rather famous in Hydrangea. Doesn’t surprise me that you’ve got your reasons for wanting to be alone.”

“Ack, you knew who I was?”

He hadn’t said anything about it until now, so she’d assumed he didn’t know who she was.

“I happened to see you wrangling those wolves back in Hydrangea. Very impressive, I gotta say.”

Something like that had happened during the continental tortoise incident, hadn’t it?

“Just figured you didn’t want someone saying to you, ‘Ain’t you the girl that caught those wolves?’”

“Yeah, you’d be right about that...”

“All kindsa folks ride these carriages, y’see. The roads are safe, though, so just take it easy ’til we get to the capital. Makes me feel safe to have you along too.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Even though the inn was close by, the driver walked her there before waving and heading off into town. Sara watched him leave and naturally found herself thinking of Hydrangea.

“That’s what the people of Hydrangea are like, I guess. They know who I am, but they don’t say anything. And they look out for me even though they know I’m strong.”

The relief of traveling with someone strong enough to subdue wolves and the urge to look out for a young girl traveling on her own could exist within one person without contradicting each other.

“I guess I’ve enjoyed my freedom back in Hydrangea just as much as I am out here.”

Once in a day, in a week, in a month, there was still a version of her who wasn’t an Invited or an apothecary and who was able to relax as much as she needed. She’d practically run away from Hydrangea, but now she was realizing that maybe she didn’t have to do that.

“Well then, I suppose I should sightsee and find some souvenirs and tell everyone about everything I saw when I get back.”

By the time she reached the capital a week later, Sara was already feeling completely refreshed. She’d arrived before her letters would, so she knocked on the door to the Wolveriés’ mansion somewhat nervously, only to be greeted by a smiling butler she recognized from her last stay in the capital.

“The master sent word via rider. He said you would be arriving first, so we prepared your usual room for you.”

“Thank you.”

She wasn’t sure what he meant by “first,” but she followed the butler to the room she’d stayed in during migrating dragon season. She’d stayed here for a bit on her way back from Rosa during the continental tortoise incident as well, so the townhouse had become pretty familiar to her.

“When shall I have the tailors and jewelers arrive?”

“Hold your horses.” Sara waved her hands in a decidedly unladylike fashion. No doubt Ri was just trying to be considerate, but she didn’t want to go to the trouble of meeting any tailors or jewelers, so she declined the offer for now.

“I’m here for work, so I don’t think I’ll be needing any dresses or jewelry.”

“You do always seem to be working, don’t you, Lady Sara?”

The butler seemed disappointed, but respected Sara’s wishes and didn’t insist any further, so Sara was able to get right to the matter at hand.

“I know I just arrived, but I’d like to make an appearance at the Apothecary’s Guild today.”

“I’ll have a carriage readied for you.”

“No... Okay.” Sara declined, then remembered agreeing to take a carriage for Ri’s sake in the past and changed her mind. Though she grumbled to herself that walking was faster, she put on her apothecary’s robe and made sure her hair and clothing were neat before waiting outside for the carriage.

She headed for the Apothecary’s Guild, looking out at the town through the carriage’s windows. Even if she thought about how the last time she’d done this she’d been with Allen, she only felt a little prickling deep in her heart now.

Arriving at the guild, Sara headed not for the employee entrance but to the front where potions were sold. Since she’d received a request, this time around, she was a guest who’d been invited to the Apothecary’s Guild. She figured she should go through the normal reception process.

“Err...” She called out to one of the receptionists who didn’t look particularly busy and the other woman looked her up and down with a ridiculing snort. Sara had to chuckle at that. For better or worse, the capital was the same as it had been the last time she’d been here. “I was asked here for a personal request. Is Noel here? If he’s not, then could I see Josef?”

Of course, she knew just telling girls like this that she was here on a request wouldn’t be enough to get her in.

“Never seen you before. Must be from out in the sticks.”

See? There she goes, thought Sara. Figuring it would take time to get through to her, she called out in a voice loud enough that the apothecaries in the back would be able to hear her, “Excuse meee! I’m here from Hydrangea for a request! Can I speak to someone in charge?”

The receptionist’s mouth was flapping open and closed like she’d never seen a young woman speak so loudly before.

One of the apothecaries from the back hurried over. “A request? Hydrangea had that new floor appear in its dungeon, right? Is that what you’re here about?”

This person seemed reasonable, so Sara handed over the envelope with her request inside. “Could you get Noel or Josef for me? They know me.”

“Very well. Just wait a moment.”

Sara looked over at the dumbfounded receptionist and stood tall, giving her a satisfied smirk.

“My!”

She didn’t really care if she made enemies at the Apothecary’s Guild in the capital. After all this was the sort of place that was continuing to produce the same exact kind of receptionists even after some of them almost got people hurt the last time she was here.

“Sara!”

Her quiet feud with the receptionist led to Noel seeing her making a weird face when he burst through a door in the back, so she regretted letting her impulses control her a bit.

“Noel! Long time no see! Wait, what?!”

She hadn’t seen Noel since last year in Gardenia, and though his face was the same, his eyes were at a different height now.

“When’d you get so tall?”

“Oh, come on, what are you, my aunt?” Noel retorted with a wry grin. He was almost as tall as Allen now. “I know I invited you here, but I didn’t think you’d be here so fast, so I’ve barely gotten started getting ready.”

“Well, I did leave the day after I read your letter.”

It seemed Ri had sent a rider to the townhouse but hadn’t contacted the Apothecary’s Guild at all. Maybe he was holding off on getting involved in her work. She appreciated that.

“The request from the Apothecary’s Guild was your idea, right?” Sara asked him.

“Yes. I’ve seen supreme potions before, but haven’t made or used one myself. And the same is true for every apothecary with relatively little experience.”

“It was the same in Hydrangea.”

And likely everywhere else too.

“I figured this wasn’t something I should keep to myself, so I talked to the guildmaster and things just kinda happened before I knew it. I guess they’d gotten word that the apothecaries in Hydrangea were able to craft supreme potions and they were kind of annoyed that they couldn’t do the same thing in the capital.”

“So that’s why they wanted me to gather supreme healing herbs.”

Noel gasped. “This is no time to be catching up. So if you’re here, that means...”

“Yep, I’ve got some supreme healing herbs for you!” This time, there was nothing to regret about the satisfied smirk.

“Already? You really are talented, Sara.”

“Well, if gathering counts as part of an apothecary’s skills, at least.”

He was right. It was no time to be catching up. Noel invited her behind the counter and she entered the guild proper. He brought her to a real brewing room instead of the little one she’d been sent to with Mona and Heather the last time. The guildmaster’s office was in the back.

“Sara!”

Mona and Heather called out to her quietly, waving as she went by. They were still just as cute, but they’d gotten almost blindingly mature since Sara had last seen them. From their smiles and the relaxed air around them, they must have been settled into their jobs as apothecaries now. She wanted to run over to them but contained herself to just smiling and waving back.

The other apothecaries stopped working and all started murmuring to one another.

“So that’s her.”

“The Invited.”

“From the migrating dragons.”

From what she could hear, the information they had on Sara seemed pretty outdated. Since no one was saying anything about supreme potions, she gathered that the lower-ranked apothecaries hadn’t been told anything about what she was here for.

Noel knocked on the guildmaster’s door and was quickly let inside. Sara followed him and as soon as she was in view, Chester leaped up from his chair.

“Thanks for coming! So, do you have the herbs?!”

Sara had an impression of Chester as a calm, straitlaced sort of type, so she was a bit surprised by his enthusiasm but returned his greeting nonetheless.

“It’s good to see you again. I have the herbs right here.”

Making note of Josef, who was sitting to the side with a grumpy look on his face, Sara took two baskets out of her new storage pouch and set them on the guildmaster’s desk.

“Ooh... These are supreme healing herbs, all right.” Chester’s hands trembled a bit as he reverently lifted some of the purple-leaved herbs out of the basket.

“It was good timing on the request. I was able to gather these while I was doing a survey of the medicinal plants in the dungeon. I thought it would be best to get here sooner, so I gathered two hundred of them.”

“Two hundred! We can get our main apothecaries some experience with these.”

If it was only their “main” apothecaries that would be getting the experience, then two hundred wasn’t even enough for everyone. Sara regretted not gathering more.

“Do we need everyone to get the experience? Supreme potions may only be used rarely, but they’re still valuable. We’ll be taking a big loss if some newbies screw up with them.”

Supreme potions sold for a lot, so Josef’s concerns were certainly valid.

“Still, if you’re an apothecary, you need to experience making one at least once.”

The capital’s guild didn’t seem to be short on funds.

“It’s not just that, though. Supreme potions can’t be used carelessly. Some people will think they can use them just because they were able to make them, like that newbie over there.”

“Sara’s been an apothecary for three years and has achieved fantastic things despite her youth. I don’t think it’s right to disparage her as a newbie.”

Sara was grateful for Noel’s quiet rebuttal. Thanks to him, the anger bubbling up in her subsided quickly. She didn’t care about being called a newbie, but she felt absolutely terrible being called careless for the decision she’d made when he didn’t even know the circumstances she’d made it under. She decided to say only what needed to be said.

“You can decide how to use the herbs I’ve provided you among yourselves. I would appreciate it if you left me out of the discussion.”

“You’ve got a real mouth on you, you know that?”

Josef was Chester’s son and would likely be either the next guildmaster or the one after that here in the capital, but for some reason he felt the need to be rude to Sara every time they spoke, so she didn’t like dealing with him. Thankfully, she’d become enough of an adult that she could just ignore it and try to get the conversation back on track.

“The letter also said you would help me with my research after I delivered the herbs.”

“Indeed. I’ve entrusted that matter to Josef. I’ll have to consider how to distribute these herbs and make potions with them.”

After giving Sara the worst possible news she could ask for, Chester picked up the baskets and scurried out of the office as if the wait for them had been killing him.

An awkward silence descended on the guildmaster’s office.

“Well, shall we sit?”

Josef, who’d been “entrusted with the matter,” was faced away from them and unmoving, so Noel made the suggestion to sit. The guildmaster’s office was of course furnished with couches for entertaining guests.

It was clear at a glance that Josef would be of no use to them, so Sara sighed and began to talk to Noel. She’d been planning on only asking Noel for his help in the first place, so it didn’t bother her not to have any help from the Apothecary’s Guild.

“So, basically, I want to have an idea of how to describe the recovery period after using a supreme potion.”

“Right to the point, I see,” Noel said with a laugh.

“When I used the potion on Allen...” Sara choked for a second there. “After he finally woke up, Chris and Caren explained that he could go about his daily life, but he couldn’t push himself for a month. So I want to know how much of a Hunter or a knight’s daily life they can really go about, and what exactly constitutes pushing themselves.”

Sara forced herself to raise her head and got out the report she’d put together on the experiences she’d heard about at the Hunter’s Guild. She didn’t know when he’d started listening, but Josef suddenly snatched the report out of her hands and began reading it where he stood.

“Using what I learned, I told Allen not to use physical strengthening or magic, but...” For some reason, her voice was trembling now. She’d thought she was over this thing with Allen, but talking about him made her heart ache. “He said going into the dungeon was his daily life and he went along on an expedition to the lowest floor to do odd jobs for them.”

Josef suddenly sat back down and rummaged around in his pouch before taking out something wrapped in paper and setting it down in front of Sara as she struggled through her story.

“What’s this?”

“Sheep candy.”

“Sheep candy?”

She’d never heard the phrase before, but her curiosity won out over her sense of caution and she picked up the candy and unwrapped it.

“Wow, it’s like a cloud!”

It was a pure white sweet like a macaron or a puffy piece of honeycomb toffee.

“It looks like a cotton sheep, so it’s called sheep candy. Eat it in one bite.”

“I see...” It was a little big, but Sara opened her mouth wide and ate it all in one bite as she’d been told to. “Mmh, ih’s hood!”

It wasn’t too sweet, but she enjoyed the way it crumbled in her mouth. It made her feel like she was eating a cloud in candy form.

“So it was Allen you used the supreme potion on—the Hunter who babysat you that fall and then became a hero the next year for landing a blow on the continental tortoise.”

Still chewing, Sara couldn’t respond, but she was shocked that Allen had become such a well-known Hunter that even Josef knew about him. She was aware that he’d gained some fame during the continental tortoise incident, but in Hydrangea, that was just something that his friends teased him about; she didn’t think people were talking about him here in the capital.

“And a close friend of yours. I see.”

Noel casually handed her some water, so she was finally able to wash down the candy in her mouth. It was good, but it did stick a bit, which she wasn’t a fan of.

“Sorry for saying you used the supreme potion carelessly when I didn’t know the situation.”

“Er, it’s okay.”

The normally nasty Josef had given her a candy and even apologized, so Sara had no idea how to respond to him.

Josef sighed and tapped at the report in his hand with his finger. “I also used a supreme potion back when I was just starting out as an apothecary.”

Sara wondered if it was the same circumstances as Caren.

“During the migrating dragon hunts?”

“How’d you know that? Right, Caren...”

It seemed Sara’s guess had been correct.

“We were childhood friends. He was a knight and I was an apothecary. We went down different paths, but we both worked in the capital, and in fields with some overlap. The two of us were both running around on the southern hills doing grunt work, me as a rookie apothecary and him as an apprentice knight.”

Sara knew exactly how he must have felt. She could remember the feeling of that tense winter perfectly. They had to keep a close watch on the approaching dragons and try to drive them away, bringing them down and killing them when they had no other choice.

“They couldn’t finish off the dragon they brought down. It thrashed around and ended up crashing down on the apprentice knights waiting in the back. My friend...” His friend must have been fatally wounded. “My friend didn’t make it.”

“My condolences.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“At the time, some knights recovered with supreme potions and some didn’t. And even though I knew it wasn’t the apothecary’s fault and just depended on the severity of the injury and the patient’s own vitality, it still left me feeling deplorable.”

Sara had thought of Josef as nothing more than a pampered noble. She’d had no idea he had a past like that and sympathized with what he’d been through.

“The apothecaries are the ones who have to make that terrible decision, but there are always some stupid knights who blame them when the worst happens. There’s nothing more asinine than that.”

He’d recovered enough to insult people, so he probably wasn’t too broken up about it anymore.

“But your report is on what happens after they survive, so it does nothing for my hurt feelings.”

Yeah, he seemed perfectly fine. Sara felt her temple twitching.

“Out of respect for your difficult decision to make use of this potion, I’ll provide my full cooperation on this report you’re putting together. That Allen of yours really is stupid, though. Making it out with his life only to throw it away right after.”

There were all sorts of things Sara wanted to say, like “He’s not my Allen” and “He didn’t throw his life away,” but she decided not to complain if he was actually going to help her.

“Well, first, shall we put together a questionnaire to get our information more efficiently? We know more or less what information we want, so it’ll be easier to put together the results if we’re working off of a template,” Noel suggested after listening quietly to the conversation thus far.

“We’ll need that, of course, but first we need to figure out how to set up the request. Sara, what did you do for the request and the reward in Hydrangea?”

“The posting looked like this, and the reward was a set of potions.”

“Hmm. Feels a bit too generous for just an hour of questioning, but it’s probably a good idea since Hunters don’t like wasting time on things that aren’t hunting. And the potions won’t cost that much.”

It felt a little exploitative that they were sold for so much more than they cost to make, but it was a specialized skill to create them, so it wasn’t entirely unjustified.

The conversation proceeded at a quick pace and they soon had a questionnaire written up and a plan to go to the Hunter’s Guild to post the request the next day.

“What should we do for the knights?”

Caren’s and Josef’s experiences had both been with knights, and the knight who had become a Hunter in Hydrangea had provided her with valuable information.

“If we can get an official request from the Apothecary’s Guild, I can bring it to them,” Noel suggested.

“No, I’ll do it. I know you can see the vice commander easily as his brother, but it’ll be easier to get them to cooperate if it’s coming from the guild and not a family member.”

Was it just Sara’s biased view of Josef that made his suggestion seem kind of nasty to her?

“Josef, Noel! We’ll start making supreme potions tomorrow in order of seniority. I’m looking forward to it!”

The door flew open and Chester strode in.

“I’ve got experience already, so I don’t need to do it.”

“Josef.” Chester frowned. “Skills decline. Even if you have experience in the past, it’s something you should do as an apothecary.”

“Give my share to a newer apothecary.”

“We can always get more supreme healing herbs. Can I count on you, Sara?”

“I’ll gather them if you request it, but I’m also of the opinion that they shouldn’t be used carelessly.” Sara made sure to state her case. “I don’t know about Hunters, but the knights seem like they’d use them carelessly, so I don’t want them thinking we can make them all the time.”

Maybe it wasn’t something she should say if she was going to be interviewing those knights soon, but she wanted to voice her opinion.

“Very well. I wouldn’t consider the opinions of an apothecary who simply doesn’t want to use the potions, but your opinion is backed by experience, Sara.”

Chester had valued Sara’s input back with the migrating dragons, but he hadn’t prescribed any undue value to her and had treated her as nothing more than a single apothecary afterward. So it was a little unexpected for him to give her such acknowledgment, but it made it sink in just how valuable the experience of using supreme potions was to an apothecary. In other words, having crafted and used a supreme potion marked her as a mature apothecary regardless of her age.

Considering her awkward relationship with Allen now, she wasn’t really sure if she was happy about that acknowledgment or not, but even the hard experiences were a part of her identity as an apothecary, she supposed.

“So you’ve determined how to make the request?” Chester confirmed with them. “I think it’ll take some time to gather your interviewees. Could you come to the Apothecary’s Guild tomorrow and observe the supreme potion crafting, Sara? You can use the rest of your time on brewing or gathering, whatever you like.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Maybe saying “thank you” when he was basically just telling her to work wasn’t quite right, but she decided to take it as an acknowledgment that she could do the work of an apothecary no matter where she was.

“Hmm? Gathering?”

She’d heard apothecaries in the capital could gather plants now without it being seen as lesser work. Was that what he meant?

“You gather in the dungeon in Hydrangea, right? Don’t you want to check out the capital’s dungeons?”

“No, not really,” she answered instantly without even thinking about it. She didn’t want anyone thinking her hobby was gathering plants in dungeons.

“Huh. I thought we had a new Plant Hunter among our apothecaries.”

“Whaaa...? Is that really a job people do?”

She recalled Nelly suggesting that to her a long time ago, but she’d never heard anything about it from Chris, so she’d assumed it wasn’t a real profession.

“It’s not a true profession, just something we call apothecaries who take on difficult gathering jobs. Chris was doing it back before he was guildmaster.”

“Now that you mention it, that’s pretty much exactly what he’s doing now.”

“I can just picture him having the time of his life out there with no responsibilities. Especially if he’s at Nefertari’s side.”

Sara didn’t begrudge Chester the wry smile. He was exactly right, after all.

Starting the next day, Sara acted as something like an inspector at the Apothecary’s Guild. At a glance, she was just a seventeen-year-old newbie, but everyone saw her as something of a veteran since she’d not only brought in the supreme healing herbs but also crafted a supreme potion herself and even used it. It felt rather awkward.

As soon as they posted the requests, they got knights and Hunters coming in to share their stories, so Sara, Noel, and Josef were busy taking down their accounts. Sara had thought Josef would just tell them what to do and leave them to it, but he was actually taking his managerial position rather seriously and sat in on all the interviews. She wouldn’t have liked that at all before, but now that she was working for him, she no longer seemed to be the object of his ire. And since he wasn’t being rude to her, it helped to have him around as someone with an important position in the Apothecary’s Guild, since Sara and Noel were both young and not incredibly likely to be taken seriously. It particularly helped to have him around when talking to the knights.

“Long time no see, Sara. You really look like an apothecary now.”

A few days into soliciting stories from the knights, the vice commander himself paid them a visit. He was no longer paying her the sort of compliments that set her teeth on edge, however, so Sara was able to tolerate him much more now.

“It’s been a while. Thank you for your cooperation,” she said to Liam, though it had taken them a few days to get any of that cooperation, and they hadn’t gotten all that much from the knights. The youngest person they’d heard from was in his late twenties like Josef, and the rest were older knights in their thirties or forties.

“There are more people with experience, but most of them have resigned and we have no way of contacting them. Or they’ve become Hunters, so you’d have to contact them through the Hunter’s Guild,” Liam explained. “The knights have a stock of supreme potions, but it’s small. Lately there haven’t been any deadly injuries during migrating dragon season, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have other work that’s just as dangerous. There were some casualties during the continental tortoise incident, for instance.”

Sara hadn’t known that.

“But if we had more details on how to recover properly after their use, we might use them more freely than we do now. That might lead to more knights surviving, and more knights being able to retain their positions as well. I almost wish we could pay you for this information.”

“There’s one thing I’d like to make absolutely clear,” Josef said, narrowing his eyes at Liam.

Sara watched, vaguely imagining the conversation as a face-off between two blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty boys. She felt very at ease not having to converse with Liam herself.

“Information on the recovery period will only help those who survive the potion. Supreme potions are dangerous items that could kill those who take them, so we may not sell them to you even if there’s demand.”

“If you’ll die either way without one, then it makes a big difference just having a supreme potion available. All knights are prepared to lose their lives.”

Sara was a bit nervous now that they were having a showdown with their words and not just their faces. She didn’t think she or Noel would have been able to say that much to him, though, so she was once again glad to have Josef there.

“Well, we have a set of questions we’d like to ask. Sara, if you would do the honors?” Noel passed the baton to her as if he couldn’t even feel the tension in the air.

Sara took out her questionnaire and began going through the list. “First, we’d like to ask about your injury. What do you remember about the incident and how many days was it before you were up and about again?”

They proceeded smoothly through the questions, finishing each interview in fifteen minutes or so. The longest part was always when they asked if the patient had used physical strengthening or magic during their recovery; there were a lot of people who always used physical strengthening almost unconsciously like Allen did, so they couldn’t even say definitively whether they had or hadn’t used it.

Sara was curious about how the recovery period differed depending on what sort of injury the patient had sustained. After returning to the Apothecary’s Guild, she took out her questionnaires and compared the answers.

“The people who only sustained head injuries were able to get back to their daily lives relatively quickly after regaining consciousness, but declined in ability when they tried to use physical strengthening and magic like they had before. The people who sustained more extensive injuries were careful resuming their training even after their injuries had healed and took more time to get back to work, and as a result, their physical abilities didn’t decline. That’s what it seems like, at least.”

“That can’t be. Let me see.”

The suspicion Sara had been developing as they gathered accounts only became more defined as they looked over the data they’d gathered.

“I see... Maybe their own perception of their injuries affects their recovery. But...”

“Yes. We can’t be sure until we have more data,” Noel said without even looking at the questionnaires Josef was flipping through. He probably had all the data in his head already, the damn boy genius.

“I think so too,” Sara agreed. “And I think we should focus on that in our future interviews. I also feel like the data is really starting to support the idea that using physical strengthening or magic leads to prolonged adverse effects.”

What was important was how the recovery period was spent. If it was clear to them that people were pushing themselves more the less aware they were of the severity of their injuries, then it would be a lot easier to advise patients about that in the future.

“Hmmm. This is interesting. An apothecary’s job is just supposed to be making and prescribing medicine, but going through all this data, I’m starting to feel like looking into the effect of the medicine is part of our job too.” Josef’s mouth twisted into a grin. He was just having fun, but Sara couldn’t help but feel the smile was sadistic somehow.

“We’re just looking into supreme potions right now, but it might be interesting to research the effect of other medicines that make patients fatigued, like mana elixirs. We may even be able to identify ways to improve them instead of just observing how they’re used.”

“You might be right.”

Sara watched with amusement as Josef and Noel got excited about the prospect of more research. She had her hands full with this project right now and didn’t even want to think about other medicines yet.

“Sara, what would you think about doing that sort of thing here at the Apothecary’s Guild in the capital once we’re done with this?”

So she didn’t think much of Josef’s sudden question.

“Huh? I mean, sure, why wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, brother...” Noel shook his head exasperatedly, but Sara wasn’t following. “Come on, Sara. I bet you’re just thinking it’s convenient that your proposal went through so easily and it’s nice that we’re helping you out with it, right?”

He was exactly right, but she wasn’t sure why he was asking that.

“The reason I took your suggestion to the guild instead of just responding to it personally is because I thought the idea of this investigation could really change the role of apothecaries and the guild itself. It was a possibility for improvement that wasn’t there before.”

“Okay...” Sara was still not really getting what he was telling her.

Josef smirked. “If we obtain some clear information on how to recover from supreme potions, meaning this research has borne fruit...” Sara wished he didn’t have to pause for effect there. It was making her nervous. “Then if you want to stay in the capital, you could be appointed vice guildmaster just like me, Sara.”

“Huh?” Sara asked, taken aback. Hadn’t Josef just mocked her for being a newbie apothecary just the other day?

“It means regardless of my personal preference, you’d be acknowledged for coming up with something with real influence. Regardless of my personal preference.”

She didn’t think there was any reason to say that last part twice, but basically he was saying that Sara’s proposal might prove more beneficial to the Apothecary’s Guild than she’d thought.

“Right. Well, I don’t plan on staying in the capital, so we can just keep things as they are.”

Sara had no ambition to rise to a higher station, so a position with more responsibilities was nothing but a bother to her.

“Not very driven, are you? It can create conflict to be in a position with authority at a young age, though. You may be one of the Invited, but it might be best for you to take your time a little more gaining experience.”

“That’s the plan.”

She’d only become an apothecary in the first place to support herself, so if she could make a living, she didn’t need anything else.

“In any case, the request to the Hunter’s Guild will likely take some more time. If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like you to stay in the capital for a month or so to put together all the data. What do you think?”

“What do you say to a meal with me sometime too?” Noel added to Josef’s proposal.

“A month is fine,” Sara said with a laugh. “I’ve got plans with Mona and Heather already, though, so if you don’t mind waiting.”

“Of course. Though I wouldn’t mind coming along with them as well.”

She figured she’d have a good time with Noel, Mona, and Heather, but now she almost felt like she might end up on friendlier terms with Josef too. Her time in the capital was already promising to be more comfortable than she’d been expecting. What she didn’t know was that the concerns she thought she’d left behind in Hydrangea were about to rear their head once more.

Epilogue: Because You’re Here

“My lady.”

The butler at the Wolveriés’ townhouse refused to call Sara anything else.

“Hello there. Oh, I’ll be going out with friends tomorrow, so I won’t need dinner.”

“Very well. My lady, you have a guest.”

“A guest?”

Who could it be? Sara didn’t know anyone in the capital other than her fellow apothecaries. She ignored the little voice in her head telling her she knew some knights too.

“Right this way.” The butler took her not to a reception room but to the room where they always had tea after dinner. She remembered hanging out here often with Ri and Nelly the last time she’d stayed here.

“Here you are.”

She went through the door he’d opened for her and found a tall boy with sand-blond hair standing beyond it. Sara froze, not expecting to see the person before her now.

“Allen...”

“Sara.”

It had been a long time since Allen had looked right into Sara’s eyes like this.

“Uhh, I’m here too.”

“Mm. As am I.”

Kuntz and Elm were sitting across from each other a short distance away for some reason.

“Huh? But why?”

It hadn’t even been a week since Sara had arrived in the capital. She didn’t know why Allen was here, but even if he’d come right after finishing up his work in the depths of the dungeon, he would have had to push himself pretty hard to make it here this quickly.

Sara ran over to Allen worriedly. “You didn’t run here with physical strengthening, did you? I know it’s been a month already, but you still shouldn’t push yourself! Oh...”

It wasn’t Allen who flinched from the words that had come out of her mouth inadvertently but Sara herself. She hurriedly pulled back the hand she’d reached out toward him and clenched it tight in front of her chest.

“I’m sorry... I don’t mean to be pushy...”

She was just retreading the same ground again.

Sara hung her head. All she could see was Allen’s feet as he took two steps back.

“I’m the one who’s sorry!”

Then with that shout, the back of Allen’s head came into view.

“H-Hey! What are you doing?”

The scene was so shocking that Kuntz stood and shouted at Allen.

“I’m really sorry! You’re not pushy, Sara! It’s all my fault!”

He was down on his knees, his body folded forward with his arms out in front of him. In other words...

“This is a... ‘Japaneez dogezah.’ I heard from Haruto. It’s the most sincere way to apologize to someone in your world, right? He said you’re supposed to slide into it, but there’s not that much room in here...”

He wasn’t raising his head, so he was talking to the floor, his voice slightly muffled. This was...not it.

“No, that’s, uhh...”

What the heck was Haruto teaching Allen? It was probably something from a manga.

“He said it was my final resort if I ever did anything to make you mad, Sara. If this isn’t enough for you to forgive me, I...” His hands clenched as if to grab hold of the floor. Just like Sara’s hands were clenched in front of her heart. “I understand that I’m just making excuses, but I got really anxious when it seemed like you and Kuntz were making a bunch of progress and I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to at least be near you while you were deep in the dungeon, so I begged the guild to let me come with and do chores. That isn’t even something they usually pay people for, so I was really pushing it...”

Sara had been so angry at him for pushing himself, but now he was telling her that it was partly her fault. She knelt down in front of Allen without thinking.

“I knew I shouldn’t have been down there. I felt guilty, so I lashed out at you when I really should have been happy that you were worried about me...”

“Allen. If you’d pushed yourself and lost your strength as a Hunter, it would have been a waste of all of your long years of hard work until now...” Sara said, laying her hand on Allen’s clenched fist. She knew how he felt, but she still hadn’t wanted him to push himself.

Allen finally looked up and opened his hand, clutching Sara’s instead. “Yeah. But that’s not what I regret. I regret that I said something so awful to you, Sara. I regretted it every day, and I wanted to apologize to you, but for some reason the words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I knew I was hurting you every day down there, but I still wanted to be down there with you instead of waiting for you back up on the surface.”

“You’re all over the place, Allen,” Sara said, face screwed up with emotion.

He’d said he was sorry, but that he didn’t regret pushing himself. But was that something Sara should be mad about? She’d been thinking about it all this time as well—about what would happen if Allen pushed himself and never regained the same strength he’d had before. He would definitely be upset. He’d be so upset, but he’d accept it and continue to work hard without regrets. That was the kind of person he was. So what was Sara so upset about? It wasn’t the idea of Allen getting weaker. She just didn’t want to see him going through pain and hardship.

“I was selfish too.”

“That’s not true! You’re always selfless, Sara!”

“It is true! I didn’t care at all about what you wanted or whether you’d get weaker, I just didn’t want to see you suffering. I just didn’t want to suffer myself.”

Allen clumsily wrapped his arms around Sara. “What’s wrong with that? Who else is gonna think about whether I’m suffering or not? Everyone...” Allen’s grip tightened. “Everyone wishes they had just one person who worries about them in this world. And I do have a person like that, but I didn’t value you enough and hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry too.”

“I’m sorry...”

Why was it so easy to say now when it had been so impossible before?

“Waaah...”

“Come on, don’t cry.”

She was supposed to be an adult on the inside. It was mortifying that she was crying about this.

“You do cause a fair bit of trouble to Lady Sara, don’t you, Sir Allen?”

Once Sara had calmed down a bit, she was surprised to hear the butler’s voice coming from somewhere behind her. She hadn’t realized he’d been standing by the wall this whole time.

“What do you mean? Oh...” Allen’s face flushed.

“Oh yeah, that’s right...” Kuntz said on the other side of the room.

“Stop it, Kuntz! Forget that!”

“Forget what?”

“It’s nothing, Elm!”

Allen stood, flustered, and held out a hand to Sara. Right, this was the same room they’d been in when Allen’s feelings had exploded the last time they were in the capital.

Sara took Allen’s hand. “And I told you I wasn’t going anywhere too.”

“You did, and I was about to lose you because of my own screw-up.”

“Seriously. I was about to give up, you know?”

“Oh man... I’m so glad I came to the capital.” When he grinned at her, it was his usual bright smile.

“Huh?” That was when it finally occurred to Sara. “Why are Kuntz and Elm here, anyway?”

Kuntz could be explained by the fact that he was Allen’s partner, but what about Elm?

“So you finally noticed us.” Kuntz stood as if to say his turn had come. “But before we answer that question, is there anything you two want to say to me?” Kuntz held his hand out and gestured as if they owed him something.

Sara gasped and bowed deeply to him. “Thank you! You were always mediating for us...”

“That’s how the Invited show gratitude, right, Sara? You pass.”

Kuntz held his head high imperiously and Allen copied Sara, performing an awkward bow of his own.

“Thanks, Kuntz. Seriously, for everything.”

“You worry people too much, Allen. But you pass! If you two have made up, then it’s all good.”

Things were a lot more relaxed now, but they still hadn’t revealed why they’d come to the capital.

“Oh, I know it’s been a month, but I haven’t used my physical strengthening yet.”

Allen was the one to answer her question, but what he said didn’t explain anything.

“Huh? Even though you should be able to now? Did Chris tell you not to?”

“I sense a lengthy conversation is to follow. Would you all like to have dinner first?”

Sara finally heard the whole story after they’d eaten and were relaxing with some post-dinner tea.

“Err, so Chris said it was okay, but Nelly told you not to?”

“Right.”

“Then if I tell you it’s okay, is that it?”

“Yeah. No, it’s not.”

Well, which is it? Sara kept the comeback to herself.

“Kuntz and I are gonna be doing some basic training with the knights for the next month.”

“Hmm?”

That explained what they were doing here in the capital, but she didn’t know where that decision had come from or what it had to do with him using physical strengthening.

“Before trainee knights start using physical strengthening or magic, they learn how to build stamina and utilize mana. I’ve watched Allen for the last month, so I know he’s strong, but I think his skills are a bit too self-taught,” Elm explained.

“I see, so he’s training with the knights.”

“Neffie is his mentor and I know she got some basic training herself, so it’s a mystery to me why she never taught any of that to him.”

“If you said that to her, I bet she’d just say that you didn’t teach him either.”

Kuntz was sharp as always. He hadn’t said why he was here, but Sara guessed he’d been dragged into training with the knights as well. She gave him a sympathetic look.

It was mostly young nobles entering the knights. Allen and Kuntz were commoners, so it couldn’t have been comfortable for them to be mingling with nobles—especially ones younger than them—even if it would help them get stronger.

It was Elm’s connections as the son of the former knight commander and a former knight himself that was allowing them to participate in this training, and according to him, it would help them have a better command of their skills, physical strengthening for Allen and magic for Kuntz.

Now that Sara finally understood what the three of them were doing in the capital, she turned to meet Allen’s gaze.

“I want to start over, Sara.”

“Start over?”

They’d already apologized to each other and made up, so what did they have to start over? Sara cocked her head.

“I won’t use physical strengthening or magic for the next month.”

“It’s already been a month, but you’re going to wait another month?”

“That’s right. I’ll spend a month not pushing myself, so when that month is up, can you tell me whether you think I can start using physical strengthening again?”

Allen wanted to go back to a month ago before they’d gotten into their fight and do everything over again from there. What could Sara do but agree?

“So you’ll all be staying here for at least another month, then?” the butler asked enthusiastically.

It was convenient, Sara supposed, since her apothecary work had just been extended to about a month as well.

“It looks that way. I guess I’ll be seeing you all around for the next month.”

Sara bowed her head. The other three copied the motion and then all looked at one another. Sara burst out laughing, wondering when she’d last been so amused as she wiped a tear from her eye.

When the three of them headed off for the knights’ the next day, Sara figured she’d go with them. She stopped by the Apothecary’s Guild first to let them know of the change in her schedule.

“Wait, Sara!”

She left a message with the receptionists, who were no longer able to take a cocky attitude with her, and was making to leave when Noel burst out from the back of the guild, Josef trailing languidly behind him.

“Allen’s here, isn’t he? I’ll go with you.”

Noel squeezed into the Wolveriés’ carriage, a pen and paper for questioning in hand.

“Well, this is cozy...”

The carriage, which comfortably sat four, was a little cramped with Sara and five tall men inside it.

“It’s great that we can hear about an experience that’s still fresh. And from someone we know, so we don’t have to hold back,” Noel said, eyes sparkling.

“You should hold back a little...” Sara had to protest, since Allen was her friend.

“So, Allen. It’s been about a month and two weeks, right? Tell us about when you were injured.”

“Well...”

Beside Noel, Josef, who knew Allen but wasn’t at all friendly with him, began his questioning without holding back in the slightest.

“You two are just like Chris...” Sara muttered.

“What an honor!”

“I’m flattered.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

The questioning proceeded during their short trip to the knights’, and by the time it was over, Noel and Josef both had odd looks on their faces.

“Allen falls into the category of those who lost consciousness from head trauma, I suppose.”

“I suppose he wasn’t aware of the extent of his injuries, then.”

Sara listened nervously to their musings.

“What’s that mean?” Allen asked.

“It’s something that’s come to light in our questioning. A lot of people pushed themselves in the recovery period when they weren’t aware of the extent of their injuries because their head was affected. Head injuries are very serious, but if the person was only conscious before the injury and after recovering, they’re less likely to be aware that they almost died.”

“Almost died... Wait, you’re saying I did?”

“That’s right. From what I hear, if Sara had been just a little bit late making the supreme potion or if you hadn’t been able to swallow it, that would have been it,” Noel told Allen, his face grave. “In fact, if not for Sara’s barrier, you might have all died. That’s how perilous the situation you were in was. The fact that you had an apothecary there who could gather supreme healing herbs, craft a potion right there, and administer it was incredibly fortunate. And on top of all that, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of you surviving the potion after taking it.”

“I...” Allen murmured, seeming to consider each word carefully as he spoke. “I was so focused on what happened after recovering that I don’t think I really understood what it was like back then at all.”

“I see. Definitely lends credence to the idea that understanding what the injury was really like at the time affects how the patient spends the recovery period,” Josef said, jotting some things down on the side of the questionnaire.

“Hey, this is supposed to be a touching moment here,” Kuntz jabbed in Sara’s place. If anything, she was actually grateful for the interruption, though, since if no one had said anything, they were about to start another “sorry” rally.

“To be honest, it was Allen’s carelessness that got him hurt, so I was worried telling him about it would make him blame himself and slow his recovery.” Sara figured it would be okay to say this now, so she explained the reason she hadn’t explained the circumstances of Allen’s injury to him.

“I see. So it can depend on the situation. In a situation where only one person survived, for instance, it might be psychologically taxing to explain things to the patient.”

“You should have told me, Sara...”

“I did say you almost died. I bet you just weren’t listening.”

As Josef took notes, Allen grumbled to Sara. This continued until they reached the knights’ building.

They all filed out of the carriage and were met at the door by Liam and two other knights. Liam gave Sara a teasing smile when he spotted her.

“Thanks for coming again today. Or are you just here to accompany Allen?”

Sara smiled vaguely in response. It seemed Liam wasn’t really looking for an answer, because his eyes swiftly moved to Elm, followed by Allen and Kuntz.

“Elm Wolverié, former Imperial Guard. I believe my father sent word that I’d be coming.”

“Yes, we received a personal request from Lord Riot Wolverié, former knight commander.”

Sara felt like he might have emphasized the word “personal” a bit, but the sparks between the two men didn’t escalate further to her relief.

“Even if it is a request from the former knight commander, we can’t just be accepting anyone and everyone to practice with the knights. In addition, as you’ve left the service, we have no reason to accept a request from you either, former knight or no. However, as the individuals in question are Allen and Kuntz, the heroes from the continental tortoise incident, the commander gave his approval.”

“What? Why am I included in that? It wasn’t just ‘Allen plus one more’? I don’t want people knowing my name...” Kuntz turned his head to the side and muttered. Sara understood his feelings well.

“Sara, I know we tried to force all the responsibility for that incident onto Allen, but I’m proud to say the knights are changing now, little by little. And more than anything else, the younger knights, particularly the trainees, are all looking forward to participating in training with the heroes of the continental tortoise incident. Now, Allen, Kuntz, come this way.”

Sara, still finding herself nervous, stepped forward. “Umm...”

“It’s okay, Sara.” Allen reassured her. “I’ll keep my promise. And I’ll learn everything the knights can teach me.”

“Okay...”

Sara would always be a worrier; there was no changing that, but Allen’s life was for him to decide. It wasn’t for Sara to butt in on. At least Allen understood Sara’s worrying. And they’d already discussed all this the day before anyway.

“We didn’t round up those with experience using supreme potions today, so I’m afraid there’s nothing for you apothecaries to do here today.”

They’d accompanied the trio all the way here, but the apothecaries were turned away at the door.

“That’s fine. We were able to get Allen’s story, after all.”

“We were able to prove our theory from yesterday right away too.”

It seemed all they’d wanted was to question Allen, so Noel and Josef were happy to get back into the Wolveriés’ carriage and ride back to the Apothecary’s Guild.

“Paperwork today, eh? I’d rather be making potions.”

“Shall we go to a dungeon while you’re here, Sara? It might be nice to gather plants.”

Sara found it easy to get along with Noel and even Josef, despite the rough start to their relationship. Maybe it was because they were in similar positions despite their disparate ages, or maybe it was just because they were all the researcher type.

“I don’t want to go into any dungeons... I’m used to Hydrangea’s dungeon, but I’ve never been to any of the ones in the capital.”

It was important to shoot down such suggestions right away.

“Well, if you go, then you’ll be used to it. So, can we?”

“No!”

It was the same sort of conversation they’d had the day before, but her heart was much lighter now.

Noel, who’d been walking beside Josef, suddenly stopped and turned around. He brought his face up to Sara’s as if telling her a secret. “So, were you able to make up with Allen?”

“Huh?! How did you know we were fighting?” She hadn’t told him that!

“It was easy to tell. You were obviously upset when you were talking about Allen. Plus, it was strange that you would come to the capital without Allen in the first place.”

Noel had seen right through her.

“I think it would be all the harder to use a supreme potion on someone you were close to. I’m not sure I’d be able to use one on my brother, for instance. But I should really give it some thought, considering he’s a knight.”

“Yeah. Everyone close to me has a pretty dangerous job, so I should give it some more thought too.” Sara took a step forward to stand beside Noel. “Come on, let’s go. We’ve got work again today.”

“I suppose we do. We are apothecaries, after all.”

Sara and Noel were both long past the point of being coddled as rookies.

That night, Sara went out to eat with Mona and Heather as they’d promised. They would have had lunch together before, but with Sara running around collecting information all day, this was the first time she was able to sit down and have a relaxed conversation with them.

“I heard Allen just got here. Was it okay to come out with us tonight?”

“It’s fine. I didn’t know he was coming and we had plans already.”

After hearing about Mona’s marriage to another apothecary and how Heather had been lately and telling them about her own recent trials and tribulations, everything she’d been through strangely didn’t feel like it was such a big deal anymore.

“It might seem like a big deal at the time, but fights like that are totally common. And all it takes to forget about them is talking to your friends about them like this. Just get it all out.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

After a fun dinner, she returned to the townhouse to find a haggard Kuntz, with Allen no different from his usual self.

“How was training with the knights?” Sara asked. She received two answers.

“It was fun.”

“It was not fun.”

The first response came from Allen; the second, from Kuntz. Sara asked for more details, excited to hear what had happened.

“In the morning we did some stamina-building and studying.”

“Studying?” Sara asked.

“Yeah. I guess there’s literature, arithmetic, history, and geography lessons. We did arithmetics today.”

“So you have classes along with basic training before even learning to use physical strengthening. That’s kinda neat.”

“It’s the basic education for a knight, I guess. We joined in the middle, so we were doing homework up until just now.”

“Ugh...”

It’d be pretty hard to train all day and then have homework on top of all that.

“We had lunch in the cafeteria and then did more training in the afternoon.”

“Again?”

“Then there was a little mana circulation practice. I sat out, of course.”

He was keeping his promise with Sara.

“That was the only part I could do...”

“Then we took a break and did some sparring.”

Apparently, they had a lot to learn before they even started with physical strengthening.

“I’m a caster. Why do I have to swing a sword?” Kuntz groaned.

“They said all the casters in the knight corps do the same thing, remember?”

“It wasn’t hard for you, Allen?”

“Not really. It’s harder to spend the day in a dungeon. But the knights and trainees all move in a really precise, efficient way. It doesn’t seem like it’d be that practical against monsters.”

“Well, they’re mostly facing humans in their line of work,” Sara mused.

“I kinda wonder if it’s worth coming all the way to the capital for this, but I’m sure Elm had his reasons for bringing us here. I’ll see how I feel after keeping at it for a month.”

“I’m not confident I’ll make it a month. Everyone’s got way too much stamina even though they’re all younger than us.”

Trainee knights were usually under fifteen, so the seventeen-year-old Allen and the nineteen-year-old Kuntz stood out a bit among them.

“I’ll study a bit more before bed.”

“Don’t work too hard.”

They each had their own things to do, but they could still hang out and get along together. Sara was thrilled to be able to so naturally do what had been impossible for her up until yesterday.

“I’ll work on my report too.”

But she’d go to bed on time without staying up too late. That was just as important to Sara as working hard.

Supreme potion users trickled in after that, but only a few at a time, so the report-writing wasn’t too difficult. When all was said and done, their data showed exactly what Sara had expected: “Pushing oneself during recovery” meant using physical strengthening or magic—mana, in other words.

“What do you think about only selling supreme potions to people if they’ll listen to an explanation of how to spend the recovery period in addition to telling them that taking the potion could lead to death? I think it would be pretty easy to get the information out since they’d only be sold at Apothecary’s Guilds or Hunter’s Guilds.”

“We’ve got a good stock of them here in the capital now thanks to you, Sara. Hunters are already making inquiries about them, in addition to the knights, of course. I was hesitant about selling them, but Hunters always want to carry them when they go deep into dungeons, and not just in Hydrangea.”

Chester, the guildmaster, was all for Sara’s idea.

“It creates more work for those selling the potions, but if we’re consistent in getting the information out, it should lead to more knights and Hunters being able to get back to work at their original strength. That’ll have a big impact.”

It wouldn’t be that big since there weren’t that many people who used the potions in the first place, but if even one fewer person had to suffer the potion’s side effects, then there was meaning in doing it.

“Allen will be done with his month of recovery tomorrow, won’t he?”

“How did you know that? And it’s actually been a little more than two months at this point.”

Sara hadn’t been expecting him to ask that, but she couldn’t help giving him the more accurate time frame regardless.

“I’ll send Josef with you. He can accompany you when Allen uses his physical strengthening and confirm that he’s fully recovered, then we can finish up this report. And we’ll put your suggestion about informing people about the potions when we sell them into practice.”

“Right! Thank you!”

Because of her fight with Allen, she’d been on the verge of coming to hate supreme healing herbs and supreme potions, but because she’d faced them earnestly, there might be fewer apothecaries who would have to go through what Sara had in the future.

“As of right now, however, Hydrangea’s the only place where we know large amounts of supreme healing herbs can be found, and there are a limited number of people that can go and gather them. It would help to have a regular supply in the future...”

“Err...”

Up until now, she probably would have said no as soon as the idea of going into a dungeon came up, but she’d been involved with this whole thing from the very beginning, and it had ended up spreading all the way to the Apothecary’s Guild in the capital from there. So this was something Sara could do, something she wanted to do, and something she should do.

“Very well. As far as I’m able to, I’ll try.”

“That’s...” Noel interjected, having been listening beside her. “Pretty much promising to do anything. Maybe add a ‘within reason.’”

“What he said.” Sara happily took Noel’s advice, pretending not to notice Chester shooting a glare at Noel as if to tell him to keep his mouth shut.

The next day, Sara headed for the knights’ with Allen instead of going to the Apothecary’s Guild. Allen didn’t seem to be excited to use physical strengthening for the first time in two months and was just sitting quietly in the carriage, looking out the window.

“I’m the one who’s nervous. How are you not? Aren’t you worried your strength might not be back?” Kuntz’s knees were bouncing restlessly.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Allen was so quiet now Sara was starting to get worried.

“But...” Allen looked back into the carriage from the window. “I don’t think there’s anything I could do if my strength didn’t come back anyway.”

“What?!” Sara almost stood up, settling back into her seat hurriedly. “But you worked so hard... And, I mean, maybe there wouldn’t be anything you could do, but still...”

“Yeah. I wanted to be stronger so I could protect you, so I could stand at your side, but I know I’ll never measure up to you no matter how strong I get.”

The words sounded resigned, but there was no resignation in his eyes.

“But no matter how strong or weak I am, you’ll stay with me as long as I’m still me, right, Sara?”

“Yeah. I mean, everyone gets hurt or sick sometimes. If strength was the only thing that mattered, then I’d never be able to be weak myself or let other people be weak.”

Her family had still loved her no matter how frail Sara had been. Sara would still be by Allen’s side even if his strength never returned.

“And I’ve got you too, right, Kuntz?”

“Look, you don’t need to go out of your way to involve me. You two can do your thing. I’ll always be around as your friend.”

“Ha ha. Yeah. I think I’ll be okay, though.” Allen clenched his fist. “If anything, I feel like I’m stronger now.”

Sara was a bit nervous she’d be turned away like she was last time as she walked in with the two boys, but Josef and Noel had already arrived and negotiated for them to sit in.

“Allen’s our most recent person with experience using a supreme potion, and the first patient who’s observed our proposed guidelines for the recovery period. The apothecary who administered the potion has a duty to see out his full recovery, and we’re assisting with her research.”

Basically, it was an extension of the agreement they already had to do research on supreme potions, and the two of them were already waiting next to a training ring.

“Wait, a ring? You’re not just training today?”

“We’ll train too, but if I’m able to use physical strengthening without issues, we’re supposed to spar today.”

A bunch of boys younger than Allen were already there as well, and they had serious looks on their faces, but it was clear that they were excited about what they might be witnessing soon.

“Okay, here I go.”

Allen slowly stepped up into the ring. He opened and closed a hand slowly, testing out his physical strengthening. Kuntz walked behind him protectively and they stood next to Liam, who seemed to be there to witness the end of Allen’s training.

“Do you need to warm up?” Liam asked him and Allen shook his head.

“No.”

“All right. Then...”

“I’ll do it.” Elm quietly stepped up. He’d been accompanying Allen the whole time as his guardian. “I heard Neffie swung her sword at you to test your physical strengthening when she became your mentor. As her brother, I’ll test your recovery with my sword.”

“You’ll do no such thing! Allen will fight another trainee!” Liam tried to stop Elm, so that must not have been the plan from the start.

“It’s fine, Liam.” Allen smiled at Liam and turned to face Elm. “I’ll see if you’re stronger than Nelly was five years ago.”

Allen clenched his fists, provoking Elm, and Elm drew his sword. True, he’d deflected Nelly’s sword back then, but Elm was stronger than Nelly, wasn’t he? Sara swallowed the urge to stop them. If Allen said he could do it, she should trust him.

A second later, there was a heavy thud. It happened so fast, Sara couldn’t even see anything. She just heard a sound like a wyvern hitting her barrier and found Elm’s sword blocked by Allen’s crossed arms.

“Whoa...”

“He blocked it...”

“He blocked it!”

With the cheers of their observers echoing behind them, Allen and Elm began their sparring match. Fists and sword clashed as if in a dance. Even when he was hit, Allen’s body deflected the sword like he was made of steel. He was clearly stronger than he’d been before.

“Thank goodness...”

“And now we’ve got one more person’s worth of data on the recovery period.”

“Yep.”

Noel’s comment was what was most important to them as apothecaries, but Sara was happiest just seeing Allen full of energy.

With one final clash, the two of them separated and bowed to one another.

“Whoa!”

There was a cheer and the trainees ran over to Allen. It looked like they’d all enjoyed the last month together.

“Wait a sec.” Allen raised his hands and jogged over to Sara. “Sara.”

“Yeah.”

Allen’s eyes were sparkling. Even without asking, she could tell that he’d made a complete recovery.

“I forgot to get your permission. Can I use physical strengthening now?”

“You already are. Of course you can.”

“Thanks. And thank you for saving my life.”

“Yeah.”

She was so glad she’d used that supreme potion. She was glad she’d told him not to use physical strengthening even if he thought she was being pushy about it. She was glad she could see Allen’s heartfelt smile again.

“Okay, there’s one more thing I have to do,” Allen said.

“Hmm?”

He went back to the middle of the ring.

“C’mere.”

“Huh? Me?”

It was Kuntz he’d called up to the ring with him.

“You’ve been learning all this stuff on your own, so I’ve been wanting to slug you once I got my physical strengthening back all this time.”

“What? What did I do?” Kuntz asked as Allen held his fist out.

“Take that!”

“Waaah!”

Sara didn’t know why this was happening, but she guessed everyone there had assumed that Kuntz, as the caster, would go flying. With a heavy thud, however, both Allen and Kuntz flew backward.

“See? You can block my full-powered punch now, you jerk! These fists can block Elm’s sword, you know?”

“Whoa! Wait! Wait! This is too sudden!”

Allen kept punching and Kuntz held his hand out, deflecting each blow. Everyone probably had no idea how he was doing it, since Kuntz wasn’t good at physical strengthening.

“Oh, he’s using his shield. He’s been practicing it all this time, after all.”

When she paid closer attention, she could see a faint brown shield appearing in front of Kuntz’s hand and shattering with each of Allen’s punches.

“If he can block Allen’s fist, maybe he can block a wyvern too.”

At some point, Kuntz had acquired a formidable weapon of his own.

“I bet you were planning on hiding behind me so you didn’t draw attention to yourself, but you’re not gonna get away with something that sneaky! We’re in the same boat, okay?!”

“No! I don’t want attention!”

Of course, from the fire in Liam’s eyes as he watched them, Kuntz’s cries were obviously in vain.

“He’s had his eye on Allen since the continental tortoise,” Noel explained. “He wants to get him into the knights somehow, and he wants Kuntz too. If they’re going to keep partying up, Kuntz should probably be ready for that.”

Sara was surprised to hear that. She’d thought the knights would think of Allen as an enemy since he sort of stole the glory from them during the incident. Even if Liam didn’t say so himself.

“Sara, the capital heard about everything in Gardenia last year too. If you’re planning on not drawing attention to yourself, it’s a bit late for that. You’re doing something eye-catching every year, after all. This thing with the supreme potions has just reinforced that impression of you. Allen coming to the capital this time might have saved you some extra trouble, though.”

“Saved me trouble?”

She was always dealing with so much trouble that she wasn’t sure what Noel was referring to. When he explained, her cheeks turned crimson.

“It’s too bad for me and my brother, but it looks like we’ll have to give up on getting you to join House Hills. You’ll likely receive a lot fewer marriage proposals in the future.”

“Uhh...”

Noel looked away from Sara, facing forward, so that she didn’t have to respond to him. He was so much more mature than her that it made her frustrated, though she was a bit grateful as well.

At his next words, she pulled herself back together.

“Well, Allen and Kuntz aren’t the only ones. You should probably prepare yourself as an apothecary as well, Sara.”

“You should prepare yourself,” was never something you wanted to hear. But she’d already decided by the lake back in Hydrangea, hadn’t she? If she wanted to stay by everyone’s side, she’d have to get stronger. She’d have to think about what kind of apothecary she wanted to be, and what she had to do to achieve that.

“I think I’m ready.”

She had the confidence now to take that step forward.

Because she’d be together with her friends, who were fooling around like kids in front of her even now.