Prologue

“Whew, we really did it this time!”

“Sure did, boss! That was a total blowup!”

“Bwa ha ha! Nothing like the glow of a burning ship on the midnight sea.”

“Hee hee hee hee. I’ll admit, there is something beautiful about a luxurious vessel. But seeing a corrupt gambling ship consumed by flames is exquisite. Yes, this sacred fire lighting up the dark night is surely the beacon of peace our goddess Amana desires. Let us offer up a toast to her blessings.”

As we rowed away in our small boat, we watched the burning ship sink in the distance. In the flickering firelight, we could see the passengers diving into the sea one after another.

We were near the port town of Hiriyenka. The shore wasn’t far off, and—aside from dwarves and the like—most of these people could swim. They’d be fine. With a blaze that big, the harbor guards were sure to notice soon anyway.

“All right! Mission complete. Finally free from that boring job!”

“But boss, didn’t we, like, totally fail to complete what the lord actually asked us to do?”

“Hmph. The ringleaders are toast, so it’s all good! Let the soldiers gather the evidence later at their leisure.”

“Good point!”

I turned my gaze away from the burning ship. Sure, the fire blazing across the sea was a beautiful sight. And yeah, watching scumbags flail and leap into the pitch-black water wasn’t something you got to see every day. But it wasn’t interesting enough to keep my attention. In other words, I was bored already.

There were four of us in the boat. A bunny beastfolk girl with shining eyes and twitching ears was leaning over one side, while a dwarven warrior and a human cleric were sharing a bottle of fine liquor we’d borrowed from the sinking ship.

Our party had pulled off something pretty reckless, and the three of them were grinning like it was the most fun they’d had in ages. Because of that, I couldn’t help but smile too. Having comrades was the best.

“All right! Let’s head home, back to our beloved Raging Kelpie’s Tail!”

I was so moved by the moment that I stood up at the bow of the boat, threw my arms wide, and let the sea breeze wash over me. The sticky salt wind whipped my hair—my pride and joy—into a wild mess, but even that felt good.

Chapter 1: A Beautiful Eccentric

The adventurer’s guild closed every day, but not for very long. Unlike ordinary townsfolk, adventurers didn’t operate on fixed schedules. Some left at dawn and returned at night, while others left at night and came back in the morning. The guild’s requests were all over the place, and the people who took them were like that too. It was my job to keep things organized and running smoothly, so I usually closed around midnight and opened before sunrise.

There were always a few who overstayed their welcome and kept drinking past closing time. I either kicked them out or locked them in. There was no point worrying about complaints from fools who didn’t know common courtesy. And if any of them tried to trash the place and get away with it, I had some very capable folks with nothing better to do who could go and beat the ever-loving snot out of them.

The short window of time between closing and dawn, and the midday shift change when the daytime clerk took over the front desk, were my only breaks as the head of the Raging Kelpie’s Tail. Not that either one was much of a break.

“I really need to do something about this staff shortage,” I grumbled.

It was still dark out. I unlocked the guild doors and dropped into the chair behind the reception desk with a heavy sigh. No one was around, of course, but it wouldn’t be long before people started showing up. Some folks always wanted to head out as soon as the city gates opened. They’d start trickling in before long.

Back when this place wasn’t so busy, we’d managed just fine with a proper staff rotation. Then things had started getting lively around here. Right when I’d been seriously considering adding another reception counter, two of my employees who’d been here for years up and quit at the same time.

We were still scrambling to fill the gaps they’d left, and I was starting to think we couldn’t keep this up much longer. Things had been changing ever since the current lord took over, what, ten years ago? This port town had slowly but surely been growing ever since. More people meant more adventurers, and more adventurers meant more requests coming in. All of that meant more work for me.

And with that sewer tunnel discovery, people were saying the town might expand even more. If that happened, the guild would be in real trouble. I needed to bring in more help, but working with adventurers here... To a normal person, that would be like having to deal with hoodlums and thugs every single day. If I put out a help wanted notice, the only ones who’d apply would be bigger headaches than the job was worth.

I sighed. “Maybe I should just go buy a slave.”

It’d be quick and efficient. I could swing by a slaver and have someone by the end of the day. But buying a slave was nothing like buying a dog or a cat. When you bought a person, you were stuck with everything that came with doing that. Just thinking about it made my shoulders tense.

I couldn’t keep manning the counter forever, though. The reception desk was only part of my job. I had guild responsibilities too—things only I could do.

I slid open the desk drawer and pulled out a thin metal plate just big enough to fit in my palm. Engraved across its surface were the emblems of the adventurer’s guild and the Raging Kelpie’s Tail. Managing this was one of those responsibilities. It was my job and no one else’s.

“Heh! Slaves who can read and handle arithmetic don’t come cheap, Master Barque!”

Those words rang out sharp and clear in a man’s high-pitched voice. It sounded like an actor delivering a line in a play, which didn’t suit this dingy old place at all. And I’d heard that voice often enough to be well and truly sick of it.

“Of course, that alone wouldn’t be enough, would it?” he continued. “A front desk position also requires the elegance to deal with civilians and the guts to handle cutthroats. And a sharp mind to comprehend complicated requests, along with a sense of responsibility to uphold confidentiality! Ahhh, what an expensive purchase that would be!”

The smug, dramatic tone of his voice grated like a rasp across my already raw nerves, but everything he’d said was spot-on. That only made him more annoying, and I clicked my tongue in frustration.

Slaves almost always did grunt work, and people who were capable of managing the front desk of an adventurer’s guild generally didn’t end up as slaves. If a slave like that did exist, they’d cost a fortune.

“Master Barque, here’s a word of advice: Try not to tank your reputation by chasing a bargain. After all, this is the very establishment frequented by yours truly—Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun!” With a dramatic huff through his nose, the young man swept his bright green hair back with one hand. His armor was so well buffed, I could use it as a mirror.

No one calls you that, Peridot. And cut that hair already. It’s a public menace.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” I muttered. “Done with your mission?”

“But of course.” He smiled. “Quite the satisfying assignment, I must say, and flawlessly executed as always! Care to hear the tale of my latest glory? Of a forbidden love with a mermaid on a hidden island wreathed in coral? Of how I received a blessing of tears and plunged into the shadowy sea to infiltrate a floating gambling den? Of how I smote the wicked threat looming over our fair Hiriyenka from within the very depths of corruption?!”

“Don’t embellish your report. Old Badger told you how to sneak onto a boat, and you did.”

“The people long for stirring stories, Barque.” Peridot winked.

I sighed loudly, then pinched the bridge of my nose. Talking to this one gave me a headache, but I couldn’t just brush him off. He was no ordinary man, and that had nothing to do with him acting a fool.

“Come now, Master Barque. Aren’t tales of my heroic deeds free advertising for the guild? You don’t have to worry, for I am a generous man and a champion of the people! Ah, yes—I am the Sun of Hiriyenka, the unstoppable lancer astride a dazzling white steed! Before you stands Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun and leader of the highest-ranked party in the guild, Seabird Tempest! Of course I don’t mind if you use my name to promote the Raging Kelpie’s Tail!” Peridot struck a ridiculous pose with his arms crossed in front of his face.

I shook my head. “I’m not enablin’ your desperate need for attention.”

Adventurers were an odd bunch, with each one more eccentric than the last. Now and then, one of the truly bizarre ones would manage to climb the ranks. I didn’t know if that was good or bad for the guild, but it definitely meant more headaches for me.

“What about the rest of your party?” I asked.

“Oh, we were together until partway through the return trip,” Peridot said with a wistful shrug. “Two of them ducked into a tavern along the way, and the other one vanished before I noticed. But does that matter? The report’s covered as long as the leader’s here, no?”

“Not if that leader’s you.” I sighed for what felt like the twentieth time this morning. So the Seabird Tempest crew hadn’t changed a bit. “Payment’s pendin’ confirmation from the lord. You’re free to go.”

“Such a cold reception. But very well.” Peridot flung his arms wide and gave an exaggerated shrug.

He was an eccentric weirdo, but he looked the part of a beautiful warrior, and those damn poses actually suited him a little. That alone made him more trouble than he was worth.

Maybe Peridot didn’t notice me silently willing him to get out of my sight, or maybe he just didn’t care. Either way, he stayed put despite finishing his business and let his gaze wander over the still-empty guild before he looked at me. For once, he wasn’t trying to show off. He seemed earnest—unpolished, even.

“By the way, will Old Badger be coming by soon?” he asked. “He’s always an early riser. I’d very much like to thank him in person for his guidance with the gambling ship operation.”

***

“As I was saying,” Liluetta said, holding her finger up in the air, “beneath the earth runs something called a spirit vein, a river of aberrantly concentrated mana. It’s a raging current of magical essence so devastating that a human falling into it would likely never make it out alive. Some even call this torrent of mana the lifeblood of the world itself.”

I listened to her explanation as we walked along the stone-paved street at dusk. She sounded dramatic and used complicated words I never expected to hear during a casual chat about gathering herbs.

“When magical energy overflows from a spirit vein and reaches the surface, it transforms the land. The mana becomes far more concentrated than usual, and the area turns into something extraordinary. Rare plants grow there. Strange creatures settle in. Sometimes the very terrain itself changes. These especially dense spots, where mana seeps out of the ground, are called spirit holes.”

I frowned a little as I walked beside her. Guess it’s like a sewer, I thought. I mean, both have something flowing underground. If it overflows, does it stink up the surface too?

“I thought a mana pool was just another name for one of those places. But now I’m not so sure.” Liluetta bit her lip, clearly annoyed with herself. She seemed a little deflated compared to how she’d been this morning, and her steps were slower too.

I couldn’t blame her. It was safe to say that today’s outing had ended in failure.

“Wellll, I also thought it might be a spirit vein,” Yune added.

Yune had her arms crossed as she walked beside us. She was wearing her usual loose-fitting outfit, and her soft brown hair bounced gently with every step. Even though she had a slight furrow between her brows, her gentle air made it hard to take her seriousness too seriously. It made me wonder if she really understood what we were talking about.

Then again, out of the three of us, I was definitely the one who understood the least.

“So you’re saying a mana pool isn’t the same as a spirit vein?” I asked.

“Probably not,” Liluetta replied. “Spirit veins don’t suddenly move or disappear.”

I still didn’t really get the difference between a spirit vein and a spirit hole, but Liluetta seemed to be back to her usual self with the way she answered my question with confidence.

That’s the best thing that’s happened today, I thought with a wry smile.

Today’s adventure had been...well, kind of a bust. No one got hurt, nothing horrible happened, and we didn’t lose anything important. But we also didn’t find much of anything.

I thought back to how we had started the day. Our plan was simple: Go gather herbs. After what had happened last time with the goblins on Sherzon Mountain, though, we all agreed not to go back there just yet. So we figured, why not use the opportunity to explore somewhere new?

Our destination was one of the mana pools Old Badger had told me about on that rainy day, when he’d shown me that old map. It was still a bit early in the season to expect much, but we wanted to scout ahead and check out the site before it was time to harvest. So we left through the northern gate, followed the town wall for a bit, then veered into the forest along a narrow animal trail none of us had used before.

“I should be able to detect mana with a spell, as long as it’s dense enough.” Liluetta’s words brought me back to our conversation. “That’s how we found the Sherzon pool. The same method should’ve worked this time, but my detection spell didn’t react at all.”

She placed her hand on her cheek and continued mumbling to herself in a stream of hushed words. I hadn’t started reading the magic textbook Sheya had given me yet, so most of what she was saying was beyond me. But I could sort of follow the gist, and it basically came down to this: The area we scouted today just didn’t have any mana-rich spots nearby.

“Maybe it’s a place where the mana only gets dense during certain periods. Like, the land sort of stores it up? Could it be seasonal? We had thought the special herbs grow because there’s lots of mana, but what if that’s wrong? Maybe mana only builds up when those special herbs are ready to bloom. If that’s true, it might even be possible to artificially create mana-rich zones, at least for short periods, but then we’d need a way to grow those herbs ourselves...and I don’t know how.”

She kept muttering as we walked, her questions and ideas straying far from herb gathering into the realm of full-blown magical theory. The intensity on her face was kind of scary. Yune looked a little freaked out too.

Eventually, Liluetta seemed to reach some kind of conclusion. She nodded to herself and declared, “There’s still a lot to consider, but I’ve at least learned one thing today. Mana pools might not show up on detection spells unless it’s the right season to harvest the herbs that grow there.”

In other words, we couldn’t track them down in advance. There really is no such thing as an easy win for adventurers, I thought. If we go scouting again, we would probably end up just wandering around and hoping we find some clues. In that case, isn’t it better to wait and use detection spells when the season rolls around?

“So today was basically a waste of time, huh,” I said. “Sorry. It was my idea.”

“Nooo, don’t be sorry.” Yune smiled softly. “We made it back safe and sound, so I’d call that a win!”

“That’s true.” Liluetta backed her up without hesitation. “Even just confirming that detection spells won’t work outside the harvest season is something.”

She was right, and we had made it back to town without any trouble. After our goblin encounter, being able to say that felt like a blessing.

“Still...” Liluetta glanced at her basket and let out a tiny sigh. It wasn’t even halfway full. “Our haul was pretty disappointing.”

“It was a brand-new area,” I pointed out, trying to stay optimistic. “And we spent half the day scouting for mana pools. If we focus just on gathering herbs next time and stick to safe paths, we should be able to get a lot more.”

At the same time, I looked at my own basket and winced. It was only about a quarter full of mostly cheap herbs—definitely not enough to cover today’s meals. Yune’s basket was in the same sorry state.

Gathering herbs was supposed to be an easy job for beginners. Finding valuable herbs in a mana pool could get you some decent coin, but normal gathering was not a good source of income. Well, Old Badger probably could’ve filled a basket if he’d been there with us today. But for us, filling three baskets was impossible.

I rubbed my chin and frowned. Maybe it really was best to hold off on mana pools until harvest season. Tomorrow, we could try sticking to the outskirts of the forest. Maybe we’d find a spot where herbs grew wild, like the riverbank I’d stumbled upon before. A place like that was no mana pool, but it would still be a huge help.

“But the herbs listed on the request don’t grow all that easily,” Liluetta said. “Even if we focus on gathering, I doubt we’ll be able to fill our baskets.”

“Uh... Well, yeah.” I scratched my head. It felt like she’d just seen straight through me and guessed exactly what I was thinking. The way she’d said it, so casual and matter-of-fact, made me feel like a total novice. But she also didn’t sound like she was complaining.

Liluetta glanced back over her shoulder. She seemed to be looking up at the sky or at the setting sun, which had almost disappeared behind the hills.

“You see, Yune? This is exactly what I was saying. No matter what, we always end up getting back at this time of day,” she said.

“That’s true,” Yune agreed. “And if we’re walking home in the dark every night, it might be a little risky. But that’s just the way things are, right?”

“I should’ve done something about it sooner,” Liluetta replied.

The two of them chatted easily between themselves like usual. Normally, I would just let them talk without trying to keep up. But this time, I had a feeling I was going to get involved somehow.

We do always finish our adventures at sunset and walk home at night, I thought. Sure, that’s dangerous, but what are they going to do about it?

“Hey, Kiri,” Liluetta said. “We were thinking about moving into an inn near the guild. Would you mind giving us some advice?”

***

“You girls are looking for a place, huh? Whatever you do, don’t pick a room here at the guild,” said Waine.

Since I was still new to this town and had no idea which inns were good—I’d never even stayed at one before—I wasn’t sure how to give Liluetta and Yune any advice. So I’d asked Waine for help, which had earned me a sour look from Liluetta and an awkward, apologetic smile from Yune. But I really didn’t have many people I could go to for this kind of thing.

“And why, exactly, shouldn’t we stay here?” Liluetta asked coolly.

“You’ll see. Come on, I’ll show you,” Waine said with a smirk. He led us up the wide wooden stairs at the back of the guild.

The second floor of the guild doubled as an inn for adventurers. Like the first floor, this area looked old but sturdy. The walls were built from solid red brick, and the dim glow of oil lamps cast the whole place in a kind of rugged charm. It was kind of cool, and I couldn’t help feeling a little excited.

That changed when I grabbed the handrail. The wood felt rough and weirdly uneven under my fingers. When I glanced toward the wall, I saw deep scratches and scuff marks all over the bricks. Even the stairs had dents in them.

“When guys in metal armor go stomping around, all that shoulder plating grinds the walls up like this,” Waine explained.

Sure enough, most of the scuff marks were at about shoulder height for an adult. That answered one question, but what about the dents in the stairs and the handrails? I didn’t get the chance to ask before we reached the top.

“This here’s the dorm,” Waine said casually, resting a hand on the closest door. “I crash here too.”

He pushed the door open without knocking. It was a big room with hardly any furniture. One beat-up desk sat tucked away in a corner with a stiff-looking chair that would probably hurt to sit on. There were no shelves and no wardrobes. Instead, piles of rumpled blankets and personal belongings were scattered all over the wooden floor.

In the middle of the room, half a dozen men with blankets over them were lying on the floor in a loose circle and chatting away. When they stopped to look at us, it made me feel a little guilty for barging in.

“Yo, sorry,” Waine said, lifting a hand. “Just showing some newbies around.”

His friends grunted their greetings and went back to their conversation. None of them seemed upset about us coming in without knocking. Apparently, this was just how things worked here. Plus Waine had said he lives here, so they had to know each other pretty well.

“No. Just...no,” Liluetta muttered. After a single sweep of her gaze around the room, she pressed her hand to her forehead like she was dealing with a headache. “I could say a lot about this, but first of all... Isn’t this a men’s dormitory?”

Well, yeah. Even I can tell it’s not the kind of place a rich girl’s supposed to be in.

“It’s not like women aren’t allowed just ’cause it’s all men right now,” Waine replied. “We’ve had a few from time to time. There are gutsy ones who’re tougher than any guy here and desperate types with no coin to their name. Still, when there’s a girl in the room, we all end up walking on eggshells. It’s awkward, so do us all a favor and don’t stay here.”

“Hmm, okay. But why did you bring us up here, then?” Yune asked.

Waine looked at her. “If I didn’t, you’d be curious about it. Right?”

So Waine hadn’t been expecting Liluetta and Yune to live here. That made sense, and so did his answer. If we’d skipped the first room on the floor, I probably would’ve wondered about it too.

Anyway, the dorm was a no. The real option must be one of the smaller rooms up here. From what I’d heard earlier, Liluetta and Yune wanted to rent a room together. Hopefully there was something that would work for the two of them.

“What is it now?” Liluetta snapped all of a sudden. The tone of her voice was sharp with irritation.

When I turned to look, she had her hands on her hips. Her eyes were narrowed, and her glare was fixed on something inside the dorm. I followed her line of sight back to the men under their blankets.

“Nothin’,” one of them said with a grunt.

“Yeah. Nothing at all.” This person sounded just as grouchy.

They both looked like they were about fifteen years old. One of them had messy black hair and wide-open eyes, and the other was pale with his ash-brown hair tied back. Liluetta had been staring at them, and they were staring right back at her.

“Do you know them, Liluetta?” Yune asked.

“Hmph. Let’s see the other rooms. Pardon us.” Liluetta strode out of the dorm like she was done with the place.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” I added, bowing toward the people in the room—especially those two—before following her.

Yune trailed after us with a confused look. I could tell she hadn’t recognized them, but I had.

“That was awkward...” I said. Those two were the guys who’d tried to recruit Liluetta and had gotten a loud earful in return.

***

“Adventurers tend to be drifters. Some of them ran away from home, and others got kicked out. Most end up renting somewhere,” Waine explained. “Of course, they wanna be as close to the guild as possible. That makes these small rooms really popular... Well, two of them are available right now.”

There were six small rooms in this part of the guild, and apparently all of them had the same layout. The two empty ones were the third and fifth down the hall from the stairs. Waine led us to the third one, which was closer to us.

“They’re popular, but there are two vacancies?” Yune tilted her head as she reached for the door. “That’s convenient, but...” She pushed it open.

The room was more spacious than I’d expected. Waine had called this a “small room,” but it was big enough to have two beds. It seemed like these rooms were meant to be shared, which was good for Liluetta and Yune because they wanted to live together. There was also a table, a chair, and a shelf. Everything looked clean, and there wasn’t even any dust. From what I could see, this seemed like a really nice room.

“This is a pretty good room, huh?” Yune remarked.

“Agreed. It’s not as bad as I expected,” Liluetta said.

I could tell just by looking at her face that she was in a good mood.

“Still,” she continued, “it’s a bit cramped. If we add a wardrobe and bookshelf, it might feel even tighter. We’ll have to be selective with what we bring.”

I thought the room was plenty big, but Liluetta’s standards seemed to be different.

What kind of place does she live in right now? I wondered. Probably something bigger than the church or the village chief’s house.

Waine scratched his head and leaned back against the wall by the door. He frowned at the two girls warming up to the place. “I’ll say it again. Like I told you earlier, I don’t recommend this place. I’m only showing you around ’cause you insisted. Take my advice and go somewhere else.”

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, from what I can see, it’s a pretty nice room.”

“Yeah, what’s the issue?” Yune chimed in.

“I’d like to know too,” Liluetta added sharply. “If you’re just making things up, I won’t let it slide.”

“This room’s not for everyone,” Waine said. “The kid might be fine here, but you two? I don’t think so. Don’t forget that an adventurer’s guild is basically a gathering spot for a bunch of riffraff.”

“Ohhhh... You mean...” Yune took a step back like something had just clicked for her.

The crooked smile on Waine’s face made him look just like the one of the riffraff he’d been talking about. He seemed to be satisfied Yune was catching on and nodded. “Yeah. We’re right over the tavern, so you’ll hear drunk nonsense every damn night. Past midnight, even—”

Before Waine had finished his sentence, a chorus of rowdy shouting echoed up from beneath our feet and vibrated through the floorboards. When I listened closely, I could actually hear what they were yelling about. Not that it’s anything worthwhile. Just drunken noise.

Liluetta winced. Yune, for some reason, had a strained half smile on her face.

I nodded to myself. Waine had said these rooms were popular, but two of them were empty. Now I understood why. Plenty of people want in, but they can’t put up with the noise and leave right away.

“Have you people ever heard of the phrase ‘noise complaint’?” Liluetta muttered.

Waine shrugged. “Don’t go expecting adventurers to care about stuff like that.”

Yeah, fair enough, I thought.

***

“So that’s how you ended up here, huh?”

We were at the only inn I knew of besides the one above the guild: the quiet, old-fashioned building where Chikka was staying. Even though it was already late in the evening, she was quick to welcome us and show us her room.

“Skipping the rooms over the adventurer’s guild was the right call,” she told us. “Adventurers don’t give a damn about bothering other people. If you two rented a room there, all the other women at the guild would be lining up at your door, booze and complaints in hand.”

“So that man was trying to be considerate.” Liluetta furrowed her brows.

“What a cursed place...” Yune added.

They stepped inside with looks of resignation on their faces, and I followed them.

I’d been to Chikka’s place once before, back when I’d helped her clean this room. That had been a total nightmare. It had taken nearly the whole day just to get the place to a state you could maybe, just maybe, call clean.

I looked around the room, then turned to Chikka. “Uh. It got messy again.”

“When I’ve got money to spare, I just end up buying stuff,” she said with a shrug.

The pile of fishing gear in one corner was a given. But clothes were scattered across the floor, the shelves were stuffed to bursting with trinkets, and what looked like doodles hung on the wall as “art.” A wood-carved cat as big as me sat next to a table, and some strange musical instruments, big and small, were half buried under other things.

But we just cleaned this place. It wasn’t even that long ago!

“Hey, it’s better compared to before. You can still see the floor,” Chikka said with a grin.

“If you don’t keep it clean, the innkeeper’s gonna yell at you again,” I warned her.

“In that case, I’ll just hire you again, tiny. Count on it.”

Yeah, at this rate, that day’s probably coming soon. Whatever. If it does, I’ll drag Liluetta and Yune along.

“This is a nice room,” Yune said. She sounded really impressed. “I was a little surprised at first by all the stuff lying around, but the layout’s spacious, it feels cozy, and the construction looks solid.”

“And it’s close to the guild too,” Liluetta added, nodding as she glanced around. “Most importantly, no racket from downstairs.”

While I was still preparing myself for the inevitable future cleanup, the two of them were already giving approving nods at the layout. They seemed to like it a lot.

The building looked fairly old, but it had clearly been well cared for. It was charming in a way that made it feel nicer than newer places. I remembered being impressed the first time I came here to deliver a message. That memory was why I’d brought Liluetta and Yune here. Judging by their reactions, I’d made the right call.

“That said,” Liluetta began, “I’m guessing the rent here is pretty steep?”

I tilted my head at her question. “Wait, you care about the rent? But aren’t you from a rich family?”

“Of course I care,” she replied. “If I’m going to work, I want to support myself. I might have to rely on the Magnan family at first, but that’s just to get started. The goal is independence.”

Huh. I’d just sort of assumed someone born into money would just use it, but it seemed like Liluetta wasn’t like that. Honestly, I kind of admired that about her.

Liluetta looked around. “This place faces the main road, has historic architecture, and both the exterior and interior are clearly well maintained. The rooms are spacious, and it looks like a very comfortable place to live. There’s no doubt it’s a great property, which also means it has to be expensive.”

“Well, you’ve got the merchant eye, that’s for sure.” Chikka grinned. “But yeah, rent here would be rough for a Rank F adventurer without a license.”

“We are just beginners, after all. That’s the truth,” Liluetta agreed without a trace of denial.

I thought the room was amazing too. And the fact that Chikka could afford to stay in a place like this made me remember that she really was a skilled adventurer. Not that she acted like one most of the time... But she was Rank C, which put her three whole tiers above us. No wonder she had more money to spend.

“It’s unfortunate, but we’ll have to pass on this room. It’s just not realistic for us right now,” Liluetta concluded with a crisp, no-nonsense shake of her head.

“Yeeeah. Too bad.” Yune sighed.

Somehow, even without asking, the two of them already knew they wouldn’t be able to afford living here. Meanwhile, I really had no clue how much rent would be.

“But hey.” Liluetta turned back toward Chikka with a small smile. “Just getting to see a place like this gives me something to aim for. Thanks for showing us around. And thank you too, Kiri, for bringing us here.”

“Oh, no problem at all,” said Chikka. “We’re fishing buddies now, remember?”

I responded at the same time. “Uh, right. Yeah.” I didn’t expect her to thank me. We haven’t even found a room they can stay in... Liluetta really is thoughtful and sincere at times like these.

“Ah, that reminds me.” Liluetta pressed her hands lightly together in front of her chest like a thought had just popped into her head. Then she leaned in a bit and looked at me with curiosity. “Kiri, where do you live? I mean, you came here from the countryside, so are you renting a room somewhere in town?”

***

We returned to the adventurer’s guild, and I led Liluetta and Yune around back to the stable with its bare dirt floor and stalls divided by walls made of wooden planks. A simple fence gate at the front of each stall made it easy to see inside. Valenwort, the big horse who usually slept next to me, wasn’t around today. Maybe he was out on a stroll or something.

I pointed to the last of the four stalls. “This is where I sleep. Not sure how useful this is for the two of you, though.”

There was a bed of straw on the ground and a change of clothes hanging up to dry. Since Sheya’s magic textbook was valuable, I hid it under some straw. Other than the gear I was wearing, this was everything I had.

The smell of dirt, hay, and animals hung thick in the air. I had only shown the girls where I sleep because they had asked me to, not because I was expecting them to live in a stable. I just couldn’t picture them doing that.

“What the...?” Liluetta froze before finishing her sentence. Her face was a strange mixture of shock, despair, and about five other emotions. With the magic light from her wand casting dark shadows across her features, the parts of her face I could see looked unnaturally pale.

That light spell seems really useful, I thought. I can even read my magic book at night if I learn how to use that. But I have to read the book before I can use magic... Yeah, that’s a problem.

Yune didn’t say anything. She seemed like she wanted to but couldn’t find the words. Instead, she stood in silence with a sad expression on her face. It looked like her knees might give out at any moment.

“Hey, what’s the matter with you two?” I asked. I really didn’t get why they were just standing there like they were stunned or something. Aren’t they overreacting a little?

“Kiri. Your parents?” Liluetta asked.

“I don’t have any,” I replied.

“You left your village and came here all by yourself?”

“Hmm, well, something like that.”

“On your own? Even though you’re just a child?”

Is that really important? I wanted to ask, but I answered her instead. “An acquaintance brought me here. They tried to sell me to a slave trader, I ran, and that’s how I ended up here.”

Honestly, I didn’t want to tell them about what had happened because it was kind of embarrassing. I’d gone along with someone I never should’ve trusted, and I didn’t even realize what he was doing until it was almost too late. Looking back on it now, I felt pretty stupid.

Yune finally found her voice. “Ohhh. And that’s why you became an adventurer.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

When I said that, Yune stared at me like she was both impressed and a little horrified. The way she was looking me over made my skin crawl, so I wanted to end this conversation as fast as I could. Liluetta was obviously from a wealthy family, and I was pretty sure Yune had a similar upbringing. The more I talked about myself, the more pathetic I felt. Telling them any more than I already had would just start sounding like I was trying to brag about how miserable my life was.

“Well, it was rough at first,” I told them, “but I’ve managed so far. Everything’s fine now.”

Liluetta’s face, pale just moments ago, turned the same shade as her cherry-red hair. She buried her head in her arms without letting go of her glowing wand. Then she looked up at the ceiling as she trembled all over.

When she turned to face me again, she was furious.

“Are you stupid?!” she yelled. “Everything’s not fine, and you clearly can’t manage, if you’re sleeping in a place like this! Listen, Kiri. A stable is for horses, not humans. The fact that you’re living here should be enough to make you realize how serious your situation is. Do you understand that much?!”

“Ah. You’re right.” I clapped my hands together. Of course a stable was meant for horses, not people. That was obvious now that she’d said it. People rented rooms and slept in real beds. That meant earning money for food and lodging. If I couldn’t even do that, then I really wasn’t doing fine at all.

Getting scolded for stuff I already knew was pathetic. Liluetta’s scolding reminded me of how the village priest used to lecture me like this a lot.

“Well,” I said, “maybe I can afford rent now. I’ve got a bit saved from the mana pool herbs. I don’t know how much the dorm at the guild costs, but I think I might have enough.”

Liluetta narrowed her eyes. “And what are you planning to do until the next mana pool harvesting period?! Let me make one thing clear. Today’s earnings are nowhere near enough to live on!”

“That’s just because we weren’t really focusing on gathering today.”

“So you’re saying you could’ve filled the whole basket if you’d focused?”

Liluetta knew the herbs listed on official requests were rare, and I couldn’t argue with that. We couldn’t just scoop up armfuls of them every day. Making a decent living from herb gathering was not easy.

“U-Um, my lady...” Yune began. “Are we, perhaps—”

“Quiet, Yune.” Liluetta cut her off sharply.

I groaned. Making enough just from herb gathering was hard, but that wasn’t the whole picture. I knew the real reason, and I was pretty sure the two of them had started to catch on too: Being in a three-person party made everything harder.

If I had gone gathering by myself today, I probably would’ve gotten the same amount of herbs. Following the trail alone or with others didn’t change how much was growing out there. But we had split the harvest three ways, and that made it feel like each of us had hardly gotten anything.

I probably could’ve made a modest profit if today had been a solo gathering trip. But from the moment we’d agreed to form a real party—no, even before that—from the moment Waine had told me to take Liluetta and Yune on as temporary party members, I’d known my income would drop. That was part of the reason I hadn’t wanted to deal with a party in the beginning.

But I want to keep this party together. I won’t complain about money, and I’m sure I can scrape by somehow, I told myself.

“Adaptability is important,” said Liluetta. “Adventuring doesn’t always take you to pleasant places. You know that from experience. In that sense, maybe you really are well suited to being an adventurer. But being so adaptable that you’ve gotten used to living like this is no good. If you’re telling yourself it’s fine since you’re the only one putting up with it, then you’re absolutely wrong.” She glared at me like she could see right through everything I was thinking. Her face looked scary, but she sounded completely serious.

“And this isn’t just your problem, you know.” She placed her hand over her chest and continued in a calmer, more instructive tone. “Remember what I said at Chikka’s place? I want to work as an adventurer without relying on my family too much. And Yune’s working too. If she can’t even earn enough to cover her own living expenses, that hurts her reputation. Don’t tell me... Are you planning to make us live in a stable?”

Of course not. I couldn’t do that. Some part of me had assumed it didn’t matter if our earnings were a little low, since the two of them had homes in town. But that wasn’t how they saw it. They were trying to earn a living and be independent, just like me when I’d left my village.

“I don’t think we can fill our baskets every day,” I admitted. When it came to money, there was no way I could bluff someone from a merchant family. Just thinking about doing that felt dishonest. “But I’ll figure something out.”

That was all I could say. I knew we couldn’t leave things as they were. I had to do something. After all, I was the leader of this party.

Liluetta gave me a pointed look. “Do you have a plan?”

I averted my eyes. “No, not really.”

“Then—”

Just as she was about to let me have it, a high, clear voice cut in along with the soft scuff of bootsteps and the heavier thump of hooves against the ground.

“My, my, how lively it is in here. Very unusual.”

We all turned toward the stable entrance. The first thing I saw was a familiar horse. It was my neighbor, the dapple-gray, probably just coming back after a little outing. Then a man stepped into the light of Liluetta’s magic. He swept his bright green hair back from his face and gave us a playful wink.

“Ah, was this a secret meeting, perhaps? Bit loud for that, wasn’t it?”

He has a ridiculously handsome face. It’s almost sparkling, I thought. And I’ve never seen him before.

“Hmm?” The man peered at the three of us. “I don’t recognize any of you. Newcomers? Age doesn’t matter in this line of work, but you three make for quite the youthful party.” He swept his hair back again with his free hand while still holding his horse’s reins. Then he looked down at us.

Up close, I could tell he was even taller than Waine. And though this man was slim, I could tell he was muscular under his armor like Waine was.

“Um, nice to meet you. The three of us just registered at the guild recently. My name is Ki— Whoa!” I tried to introduce myself, but Valenwort pressed its face into mine. I wasn’t used to seeing it awake, so getting nuzzled like this caught me off guard.

“Now, now, Mercetino. He’s speaking.” The man gently stroked Valenwort’s neck. He had scolded the horse, but his tone and touch were anything but stern.

“Are you Valenwort’s owner? Um, Mercetino?” I asked.

The man rubbed his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully. “You call him Valenwort? Heh. Then I know exactly who you are. But first, to answer your question, no. Your deduction was admirable, but you were just a bit off. He and I aren’t in a master-servant relationship.”

“Uh, what does that mean?” I asked, while I tried to figure it out in my head. Not a master-servant relationship? Wait, would an owner and their horse count as master and servant? Now I’m really confused.

“Ahem. He’s a cherished member of our team,” the sparkly man declared, patting Valentino—no, Mercetino—on the neck as he swept back his hair. Again.

Yeah, this guy’s kind of weird.

“Mercetino travels with us on our adventures. We’ve shared joys and sorrows and supported each other every step of the way. There were hardships we could only overcome because he was with us. He’s a member of our party and our dear companion.”

“I-I see.”

So Mercetino was an adventurer too. That made sense. He lived in the stables attached to the adventurer’s guild, so of course he belonged to an adventurer. That adventurer would’ve brought him along on quests—they wouldn’t keep a horse otherwise. All of that seemed really obvious now, but I just never really thought about it before. This horse was a seasoned adventurer with way more experience than me.

“Well, now that I’ve answered your question, it’s my turn to ask. You don’t seem to know who I am, but I’ve heard about you. You’re the straw thief, right? The one who recently took up residence next to Mercetino?”

My heart skipped a beat, and my whole body went stiff under that narrow-eyed stare of his. “Straw thief.” Since this man took care of Mercetino—it didn’t matter if he was the horse’s owner or party member or whatever—I’d been using his straw this whole time.

“I-I’m sor—”

“No worries!” The man cut in with a light chuckle before I could finish apologizing. He raised a single finger and crossed his arms in front of his face as he looked dramatically off into the distance. “For I am Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun—a man whose heart is broader than the great sea itself!”

This guy absolutely reeks of failure. He’s a lost cause, I thought, and I glanced to the side. Sure enough, Liluetta had her brows drawn tight. She was probably thinking the exact same thing.

Then I looked past her.

“So...cool...” Yune had her hands clasped in front of her chest like she was praying, and her eyes were sparkling.

Yep. Yune is definitely the kind of person who would fall for a guy like that.

“Come on, boss, don’t tease that newbie so much,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “Straw’s cheap!”

I spun around just in time to see a pair of long ears pop up from behind Mercetino.

Those ears, soft and white and fluffy-looking, twitched like a rabbit’s.

“’Sup, newbies! I’m Teteni, part of this guy’s party. Nice to meetcha!” A young woman sprang out from behind the horse with a light hop, and one of her long rabbit ears flopped over when she landed. She threw one arm up in the air and winked at us.

I hadn’t felt her presence at all, but there she was all of a sudden. She was brimming with energy, and her peppy greeting was the friendliest I’d ever seen. Her appearance was a surprise too. Ears aside, her hair was as white as snow and her eyes were bright red.

“Done being shy already, Teteni?” Peridot teased.

“Hey! Don’t say stuff like that, boss. I’m not shy!” she protested.

“Forgive her, my young friends,” Peridot said with a breezy laugh. “She’s a rabbit, so she’s naturally a little wary around strangers. It’s actually quite rare for her to show herself so quickly around new people. I suppose that speaks to your charming natures.”

Or maybe she just doesn’t see us as a threat, I thought.

Peridot went on. “Once Teteni opens up to someone, she gets very attached. Do treat her kindly.”

“C’mon, boss! Quit talking like I’m some kid!” Teteni huffed, and her ears twitched as she bounced up and down in protest.

With Peridot’s warm smile and Teteni hopping around like that, the tension I’d been feeling was already starting to melt away.

“Um, Miss Teteni, are you a beastfolk?” I had to ask, because I just couldn’t stop thinking about those rabbit ears. I’d read about beastfolk—humans with animal traits—in the scriptures of the goddess Amana, but I’d never seen one before.

“Yup! As you can see, I’m a rabbit-type beastfolk. First time meeting one?” Teteni asked.

“Yes. You’re the first I’ve ever seen,” I replied.

“Oho, I thought I’d been feeling your gaze on my lovely ears this whole time. Makes sense now. I guess beastfolk are kinda rare this side of town. Plenty of us on the east side, though. Dogs, cats, mice, all kinds.”

The town of Hiriyenka was split down the middle by a large river, dividing it east and west. I hadn’t been to the east side yet, and this was the first time I’d ever heard about its beastfolk population. It wouldn’t surprise me if it felt like a completely different town over there.

“Wanna touch ’em? Just a little? I don’t mind!” she offered, wiggling her ears as she crouched down in front of me and hugged her knees.

“Can I? Really?” Snow-white rabbit ears, so soft and fluffy, twitched right in front of me. I couldn’t resist. I reached out—

“Stop that,” Liluetta snapped. “I understand beastfolk are a rare sight, but we haven’t finished our conversation.”

“Ugh...” I pulled my hand back, and Teteni gave me a sad, tiny frown.

Liluetta wasn’t wrong, though. I’d gotten distracted by the two strangers (and Mercetino), but we had been right in the middle of a pretty important party conversation.

“You’re Mr. Peridot and Ms. Teteni, correct? I apologize for the commotion here in the stable. The three of us still have things we would like to discuss privately, so we will be taking our leave.” The way Liluetta spoke, and the bow she gave at the end, were textbook examples of grace and courtesy. She glanced our way, silently urging Yune and me to follow.

I quickly dipped my head in apology. “S-Sorry for the trouble.”

“Pardon us,” Yune added, bowing as well. With Liluetta leading the way, we headed for the stable doors.

We had been the first ones here, but Peridot and Teteni had come to stable their horse. That was what this space was really for, so it was right for us to leave and talk somewhere else.

“Wait a moment!” Peridot called out before we’d taken more than a few steps. “I must confess, I’m rather prone to meddling. Won’t you let me in on what you’re discussing—”

“No. This is our problem.” Liluetta shot him down.

I blinked. That was fast. She didn’t even let him finish! I guess Liluetta really wants to get back to our conversation... She’s still pretty mad at me, huh.

“Now, now. Advice from your elders is worth listening to. I do, at least, have a little more experience than you. So I might just be able to offer a solution none of you have thought of. Besides, just talking things through doesn’t cost you a thing. Adventurers are supposed to make good use of whatever they can get their hands on, am I right?”

Even after Liluetta had clearly and flatly refused him, Peridot still wouldn’t back down. This guy is really something else. He doesn’t have anything to gain from spending time on us, but he’s still trying.

“Or, perhaps... You were planning to leave without introducing yourselves?” Peridot asked. “Even after Teteni and I offered our names to you?”

Liluetta stopped in her tracks. I saw her cheek twitch in the glow of her magic light. I guess she decided it was finally time to shut him down for good. She drew in a breath, long and slow, and exhaled again before turning to face him.

She locked eyes with Peridot, opened her mouth—

“Oooh! Me too, me too! I totally wanna know! What’re your names?” Teteni bounced into the space between them with her ears flopping and her voice as bright and eager as ever.

Liluetta’s eyes went wide, and she clamped her mouth shut.

Peridot ran a hand through his long, silky hair. “Heh, I understand. You want to keep the suspense alive. After all, there’s nothing quite as important as the name you first present to the world. Adventurers are those who dream of becoming heroes! We all want a name that resounds across the land, along with a noble and beautiful title. I, Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun, would be delighted to help each of you come up with a most splendid moniker!”

“Yaaay! Way to go, boss!” Teteni cheered. “That’s the kind of help nobody asked for!”

As Peridot struck yet another baffling pose, Teteni clapped and bounced like she’d just witnessed a miracle. Even the horse let out a happy whinny.

Um, who exactly are these people? They don’t seem like bad guys or anything, but still. I didn’t know what was going on anymore, but they sure looked like they were having fun.

“No, thank you. We are not interested,” Liluetta said. She looked completely deflated.

That was actually pretty impressive, because I could never take the fire out of her that fast. These people, whoever they were, had done it without even trying.

“Well...” After a pause, Liluetta sighed and continued. “I suppose you’re right. It would be rude not to introduce ourselves when we’re the newcomers here.”

The sigh said it all. Liluetta had given up. She’d even dropped the polite tone she had been using with Peridot and Teteni. From the look on her face, I was pretty sure she just wanted to wrap this up and get out of here without having to accept some dumb nickname.

She kept her gaze slightly lowered, avoiding eye contact with the beaming duo and their horse, and gently placed a hand over her chest. “I’m Liluetta. This is Kiri and this is Yune. We’re a new party, just starting out, so we’ll pass on any titles that are too much for us.”

“Got it, got it! Liluetta, Yune, and Kiriand! Pleasure to meetcha!” said Teteni.

“Heh! All three excellent names. I can already see your radiant futures taking shape,” Peridot added. For some reason, he looked deeply satisfied with himself.

Liluetta’s introduction had been brisk and plain, and she’d skipped her last name—probably to avoid anyone connecting her to the sea salt guild. She’d gone ahead and spoken for Yune and me too. I was pretty sure she just wanted to get out of this situation as soon as possible.

That was fine, except they got my name wrong. Peridot was even complimenting it.

“So, so? What were you guys talking about?” Teteni leaned in with a big smile full of enthusiasm. “Come on, don’t be shy. Just let us help!”

“Well...” Liluetta hesitated. She didn’t look annoyed by Teteni, but I could tell she was overwhelmed. I had a hunch this kind of upbeat personality wasn’t Liluetta’s favorite.

Yune, with her usual gentle smile, chimed in. “Um, actually, the young lady here and I are trying to find a cheap place to stay.” She ignored the sharp glance from Liluetta and shook her head. “It may be humiliating for someone in your position to admit you’re short on money, my lady, but the truth is, we’ve never had to deal with financial struggles before. This whole situation is uncharted territory for us. Wouldn’t it be wise to humbly ask for help?”

Wow. You have to actually experience being broke to understand how it works? Must be nice, being rich.

“I see! So the two of you are looking for affordable lodging? Why, that’s easy!” Peridot shrugged like finding a place to live was the simplest thing in the world.

Does he actually know a place? I waited for Peridot to explain, only to see him shifting his gaze toward Teteni.

Teteni beamed at us with her red eyes sparkling and her bunny ears perked up. She looked like she was about to burst. “Yes, yes, yes! I know the perfect spot!” She bounced up and down, waving her hand in the air. “It’s an adventurer’s inn for women only. I live there! Space is kinda tight, but the price is super cheap, and it’s pretty close to the guild! Plus it’s a newish building, so no drafts or leaks, guaranteed!”

Liluetta and Yune both looked a little taken aback. Teteni meant well, but I wondered if maybe her enthusiasm was working against her. Still, this inn sounded almost perfect for the two of them. I had never heard about a place like that, so maybe talking to Peridot and Teteni really was the right call.

“Um, what exactly do you mean by ‘an adventurer’s inn for women only’?” Liluetta asked, slowly backing away to reclaim some of her personal space from Teteni.

I was wondering the same thing. We didn’t have inns in my village, so I didn’t know if it was normal to have a place that was just for women.

“Lemme explain!” Teteni beamed at us again. “A retired lady adventurer runs the place. I heard she’s been burned one too many times by men and lost all faith in ’em. So, the inn’s off-limits to guys as a rule!”

Wow. I didn’t think a conversation about inns could make me feel so depressed.

“Plus,” Teteni continued, “if you live there and you get a boyfriend, she kicks you out! So I’m the only one living there now, and that means there’s tons of rooms to choose from! Sounds great, right? Right?!”

“W-Well, I mean, it’s not like I have a boyfriend or anything...” Liluetta trailed off.

“Perfect! Then it’s settled!” Teteni grinned. “Hey, boss, I’m gonna go show these two the inn, ’kay?”

“Wait, what?”

“Whaaat?”

Teteni grabbed Liluetta and Yune by their arms and started cheerfully dragging them out of the stable.

Is she guiding them or kidnapping them? I can’t really tell. I don’t think Liluetta and Yune are in danger, so... I didn’t know how to finish that thought, so I just stood there and watched without trying to stop whatever was going on.

Yune gave me a helpless glance, and Liluetta mouthed we’ll talk tomorrow before disappearing from view. With her magic light gone, the stable plunged back into darkness.

It was quiet with the three of them gone. Once my eyes adjusted to the moonlight shining through the wooden window slats, it finally sank in. Teteni had really grabbed them and left, just like that.

“Heh. Teteni gets lonely easily, you see,” said Peridot, brushing his smooth hair back again.

Teteni had said that she was the only one living at that inn. If Peridot was right, living all alone would definitely be tough for her.

“The landlady’s a bit of a character, but she definitely supports women. She actually started running that inn because she was fed up with how the guild rooms were all being taken over by men, so you don’t need to worry about your friends.”

“I see.”

“Still, you know what staying at that inn says about a woman, right? She’s basically telling the whole world she’s single. The women who live there are prime targets for men who fancy themselves charming.” Peridot smiled. “I’m counting on you to watch over them, Kiriand.”

But how am I supposed to do that? Also, he still doesn’t know my name...

I spoke up. “Um, my name’s not Kiriand. It’s—”

“All right, Mercetino. Shall we get you to your stall?” Peridot said softly. “We’ve been at sea quite a bit lately, so getting to ride you again was a joy.”

After Peridot opened the stall gate and gently stroked the horse’s neck, the dapple-gray trotted in on his own. I could tell he was a calm and clever horse, which was a side of him I had never seen before. Until now, I had only ever known him as the horse sleeping in the stall next to mine.

The tone of Peridot’s voice caught me off guard too. After all his over-the-top speeches and weird poses, hearing him speak so gently and warmly was surprising. Peridot really meant what he said, I realized, about Mercetino being their companion. This horse isn’t just an animal or a mount. He’s a real member of their party.

“Sleep well. We’ll head out again tomorrow, Mercetino.” Peridot gave the horse one last pat before turning to me. “Now, Kiriand. I take it you haven’t had dinner yet? Allow me to treat you.”

“Um, again, my name’s not Kiriand— Wait, what?” I had so many questions all of a sudden. Where did that come from? We’re getting dinner together? We just met, but he’s offering to buy food for me?

“I am certain our paths crossed tonight because of fate,” said Peridot. “Why not tell me a bit more about yourself?”

***

“Don’t hold back. Eat as much as you’d like.” With a smile, Peridot gestured to the mountain of food in front of us. Our table was big enough for four people, and the whole thing was covered with plates and dishes of food. The lady working in the kitchen had to go back and forth a bunch of times just to bring everything out. Everything was from the expensive part of the guild’s menu too.

What is he thinking? I wondered.

“I just wrapped up a pretty big job,” Peridot said, almost like he was answering my thought. “My wallet’s feeling a little heavy, so I thought I’d celebrate. There’s no way I can finish this alone, though, so I’m counting on you to help me out. Eat until you’re stuffed.”

“Uh, okay.” I nodded. “Thanks for the meal.”

Seeing all this expensive food in front of me was pretty intimidating, but leaving leftovers would be a waste. And I was hungry... So I picked something I didn’t recognize, scooped a bit onto a plate, and brought it to my mouth.

Whoa. It’s delicious! I had taken a bite of crispy roasted chicken skin wrapped around fresh vegetables dipped in some kind of sauce. The flavors all blended together and tasted really good.

“Tasty, isn’t it? That’s one of my favorites. I’m glad you like it.” Peridot grinned as he watched me eat. He reached for a different dish, popped some of it into his mouth, and chewed happily.

Peridot was strange. He was handsome, maybe even beautiful, but everything he did or said was just a little off. Like those dramatic gestures and poses... All of that made me think of what I’d heard about actors performing in plays, but I’d never actually met anyone like that before.

He was such an odd person. I was just a rookie adventurer, but he talked to me like I mattered, went out of his way to offer help, and even bought me dinner.

He...reminds me of Uncle Lehmar.

I put that thought aside for now and reached for a thick slab of roasted meat. “You said you wanted to hear my story, but what exactly should I talk about?” I asked.

Across the table, Peridot tilted his head thoughtfully while tearing off a piece of walnut bread. “Hmm, that’s a tough question,” he mused. “If I want to know everything about you, you would have to tell me everything. We’d be here until sunrise. What a conundrum.”

That’s his answer? Yeah, this guy is really weird.

“All right, then. Let’s start with your eyes,” said Peridot.

“My eyes?”

“Yes, your eyes. They’re watching me cautiously while you stuff your face without hesitation. I can tell you’re thinking, ‘Might as well use him while I can.’” He laughed. “A fine attitude, I say. Very adventurer-like for a rookie. I like that.”

That caught me off guard, and all I could do was blink. I hadn’t even realized that was what I’d been thinking until after Peridot had said it.

“Cunning eyes,” he continued. “Fragile too. Underneath it all, you’re still a sincere and naive boy, aren’t you? But that doesn’t match the sharp wariness or that defiant edge I’m seeing now... Let me guess. You’ve already made one painful mistake. You suffered, but you survived. Now you’re starting to find a little confidence.”

A chill ran down my spine. The gentle smile on Peridot’s face told me this kind of insight was completely normal for him, and that made me feel even more scared.

“That’s when it’s easiest for you to get killed,” he said. “I have no intention of hurting you, so let me offer you this warning as someone with a little more experience. If you ever spot the same trap that caught you once before, don’t challenge it. Turn around and walk away.”

Peridot was a strange man, but now I had the feeling that was just on the surface. There was something else going on underneath—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“Just kidding. Truth is, I already heard a little about you from Master Barque. Surprised, Mister Straw Thief?” Peridot winked.

“Ah...” I hesitated. He talked to Barque about me ahead of time, which explains how he guessed all of that. Right? But... “How much did Barque tell you?” I asked carefully.

“You were almost sold to a slaver but managed to escape. After that, you became an adventurer, and Old Badger taught you how to gather herbs. That’s about all I heard.”

“I only told Old Badger about the slaver thing.”

Peridot gave me a surprised look. Well, I had told Liluetta and Yune earlier in the stables too, but that was it. I hadn’t mentioned it to Barque or to Waine, Sheya, and Chikka. That meant Peridot had been eavesdropping on our conversation in the stable.

Peridot shrugged. “Well, Old Badger always was a bit loose-lipped.”

Oh. That does sound like Old Badger, actually.

“Old Badger lived in the large shared room upstairs, you know,” said Peridot. “It’s noisy and hard to sleep there, but it’s also where information flows most freely among adventurers. Of course, he might have told Master Barque about you in a report too. At any rate, I wouldn’t count on your secrets staying secret.”

“Well, I wasn’t really trying to hide it,” I replied. I felt all the tension drain out of me and popped a meatball into my mouth. It tasted like chicken.

I never thought of Old Badger as a good person. In fact, the reason I had felt safe getting close to him was because he wasn’t all that friendly or kind. So, even if he had gone around telling people my story, that didn’t really bother me. The only thing that popped into my mind was, Huh, maybe everybody knows already.

“But if it’s not a secret,” Peridot asked, “then why did you only tell him?”

“No one else asked,” I answered.

People at the guild didn’t really talk about who they were, and they didn’t seem interested in who anyone else was either. I figured maybe it was just because towns had too many people, but that still threw me off. Back in the village, everyone wanted to know everything about everyone else.

“Ahhh, adventurers come from all kinds of backgrounds,” said Peridot. “When someone seems like they’ve got a story, people tend to tread carefully. But if you make close friends, you might end up swapping tales.”

Is that how it works? I wondered.

“Heh.” He picked at some fried whitefish before looking at me like I was some rare and exotic animal. “I see. You might be more interesting than I thought.”

I didn’t think I was that unusual. At the very least, I was definitely more normal than Peridot.

“When Master Barque told me about you,” he said, looking me over again, “I didn’t expect such a small child. So that was a bit of a surprise.” After thoroughly inspecting me, he picked up his cup and took a sip of tea.

The same warm, fragrant drink was in front of me, and steam rose from both of our cups. I always thought adventurers only drank alcohol, so this was a little unexpected.

“Betrayed by someone you trusted and forced to flee, all alone in a town you knew nothing about... If a normal child your age were in that situation,” Peridot said evenly, “they’d probably just sit down, start crying, and stay put. From there, the endings vary. Some might starve to death, while others might fall ill begging for scraps or digging through trash and die that way. Some might make it to winter only to freeze to death, and the ones who turn to theft might waste away in jail until they die. The way they go out depends on their constitution, I suppose.”

I’d just reached for a meatball, but my hand froze. Every one of those examples ended the same way—the only difference was how they died.

“In this town,” Peridot continued, “that’s just how it is for a kid with no family or guardian. Oh, or, someone like that might get lucky and get taken in by the church orphanage. Only if there’s room, of course.”

“Orphanage?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

“Hmm? Ah, maybe you don’t know the term. It’s a place where church folks look after children without parents.”

“Oh, the priest in my village did that.” So it’s called an orphanage, huh.

“But instead of relying on anyone,” Peridot said, smiling like he truly found this entertaining, “you became an adventurer to survive. Fascinating.” He lifted a spoonful of soup to his mouth and sipped it without making a sound.

This guy sure sounds casual talking about such a heavy topic...

“You’re probably the kind of person who can accept the situation they’re in exactly as it is,” he added.

I don’t think that’s a compliment. At least, it doesn’t sound like one.

“Those two you were with earlier are obviously better dressed than you. The way they move is different too. Even their smallest gestures show they were raised well. Judging from what I saw, they come from some serious money. But you’re sleeping in a stable, and you don’t seem envious or bitter at all. Am I wrong?” He said it all with an easy smile, like he was proud of his ability to read people.

Liluetta hadn’t introduced herself as a Magnan, but someone like Peridot could probably tell what kind of family she came from just by watching her. He had a sharp eye.

Hmm. I gave it some thought. Is he right? I don’t feel jealous or bitter at all? No. That’s not true.

On the day we’d fought the goblins, when Liluetta had said something snide to me, I’d sped up out of spite instead of matching my pace with hers and Yune’s. I still regretted doing that. And earlier today, when Yune had said she’d never experienced being poor, I remembered thinking, Wow, must be nice being rich. I had felt jealous, so I did have those kinds of feelings.

“You’re making a face like I got it wrong. But I think I’m right,” Peridot said. “It’s not that you don’t feel those things. No one’s completely free of them. But with you, it’s faint, like those feelings don’t hit you very hard. When they do, they pass quickly and you forget about them.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. It’s not like I never get jealous. I agree with that part. But is how I feel different from how people normally feel?

“I’ve never really compared myself to others, so I wouldn’t know,” I admitted.

“Hah! There it is.” Peridot snapped his fingers like I’d just said the right answer.

Huh. So that’s how you snap your fingers. I’ll have to try that later.

“Other people are other people. You are you. That’s the way you think, isn’t it?” said Peridot. “You don’t spend much time comparing yourself to others. So when you’re around those two sweet girls who were born into money and good fortune, you just accept that they’re different from you. You don’t get hung up on it.”

“Huh.” After hearing that, I kind of agreed with him. But I also wasn’t sure it was true. Maybe I did get hung up on things like that sometimes, just not very often or very much. And if I did, was that such a bad thing? “Let’s say you’re right. What’s your point?” I asked.

“Point? I don’t have one.”

Seriously, what’s with this guy?

“Ha ha, I might’ve put you on the spot there.” Peridot paused to munch on a stick of raw vegetable. “It’s just how I am. When something gets stuck in my head, I can’t let it go until I’ve figured it out. That’s all.”

So he really had just been curious. Somehow, that made it feel even weirder.

“But still, what we were just talking about... Maybe it’s important. Not to me, necessarily, but to you. That slightly unusual trait of yours is what’s letting you stay here as you are, but...”

To him, it’s just a passing thought. But he thinks it might be important to me. I tilted my head, waiting for him to explain what he meant, but the rest of that sentence never came.

A familiar voice cut through from behind me.

“Well, if it isn’t that dazzling bastard Peri. You two make a weird combo... What’s going on here?”

A familiar man’s voice made me turn around, though I already knew who it was.

“Ah, Rickino!” Peridot called out. “It’s been a while. How are you?”

Wait, Rickino? Who the heck is that supposed to be? I wondered. It was definitely Waine standing there, scratching the back of his head with an incredibly annoyed look on his face.

“Not a single damn part of that is right,” he complained. “You’re just as clueless as ever.”

This was the second time I’d seen Waine today. It looked like he’d just come downstairs from the large room on the second floor.

“Figured the kid would be back by now,” he continued, “so I came to train him. What the hell is this spread? You two really think you can eat all this?”

“Are you stupid?” asked Peridot. “There’s no way we could finish this much.”

“You’re the stupid one.” Waine grabbed a hunk of meat by its bone and took a bite like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He really just helped himself, huh... Better than letting it go to waste, I guess.

“Are you truly training him? That’s surprising. I didn’t think you were capable of teaching someone,” said Peridot.

Waine shrugged. “Just kinda happened. What about you? What are you doing with the kid? I thought you didn’t care about other people.”

“What are you saying, Eishin? I care about others, just like any normal person would.”

“Then learn other people’s names already.” Waine leaned against the back of a chair and gnawed on another piece of meat he snagged from the table.

Peridot just smiled. He really didn’t seem mad or annoyed or anything. I couldn’t tell if these two got along from the way they talked, but I was pretty sure they knew each other at least. That made me feel a little less tense.

“Hey, Waine. What kind of person is Mr. Peridot?” I asked.

“A real weirdo who’s obsessed with horses and himself,” Waine replied.

That answer was an even bigger relief. I felt my whole body relax.

He had more to say about Peridot, though. “He borrowed money to buy a horse, then freaked out when he realized how expensive the feed was. So even though he bought the horse for adventuring, he ended up going on adventures just to pay for the horse. Total idiot, right?”

“Hmph. That debt’s long since been repaid,” said Peridot. “Besides, when you think about the value of Mercetino’s contributions, it really wasn’t that big of an expense.”

W-Well, taking care of a horse and paying off debt is respectable, right? He’s definitely eccentric, but maybe he’s not a bad person.

“Just imagine my beautiful self astride a beautiful white horse. Don’t you think that image is pure poetry?”

Did he just call himself beautiful? Wow. I mean, he is pretty cool, and he’s kind of...sparkly, I guess.

“Um, but isn’t Mercetino gray?” I asked.

“Gray horses age into white, you know. Indeed, Mercetino will be a most brilliant white just in time for my fame to echo across every corner of this world!” Peridot struck another flashy pose.

This horse-loving guy is strong. Like, mentally strong.

“You get it now, kid? If you take this guy seriously, he’ll wear you out,” said Waine.

I nodded. “I think you’re right.”

After talking with Peridot, all I could think was, He’s a weirdo. He was handsome, his smile sparkled, and he was even treating us to this meal. And he was the type of person who saw Mercetino as a companion. But he’s still a weirdo.

Waine looked at Peridot again. “All right, serious question: What do you want with the kid? You’re so obsessed with yourself, you barely care about anyone else. So if you’re just bothering him on a whim, stop. It’s time for us to start training.”

“Hmm, that’s a little hurtful,” Peridot replied. “It sounds like we’ll need to have a long talk later about what you really think of me. As for why I’m here, there’s something I want to ask him. Would you mind backing off today? I’ll handle his training.”

“You? You’re gonna train the kid?”

“He wants to become a warrior, doesn’t he? In that case, eating a lot to build up his body also counts as training. I intend to make sure he eats until he can’t move, so no sparring with you today.”

“Well, yeah, I guess he is kind of scrawny.”

Eating a lot counts as training? That idea had never even crossed my mind. Well, back in the village, grown-ups like my older big brother used to say stuff like, “You’ll never get big and grow up if you’re picky with your food.” So people who ate a lot probably did get bigger, and I knew that people who were big tended to be strong. For a warrior, then, eating was like training to build a strong body. Maybe that was why the portions here were so huge.

“So?” Waine prompted Peridot. “What did you wanna ask the kid?”

“About Old Badger.”

Thump. My heart thudded once, deep and heavy. The quiet shock I’d just felt was like someone had slipped a hand into a crack in my heart I didn’t know about. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Waine making a face like, Ah, so that’s what this is about. But I couldn’t bring myself to turn and look at him.

“He was a friend of mine, you see. Kiriand, if you’re willing, would you tell me about him in your own words?” Peridot looked sad and lonely. Right now, he was just an ordinary man who had lost a dear friend.

“Tell him, kiddo.” Waine’s voice was soft and a little solemn too. He reached for another piece of meat on the table.

I really think he should eat some vegetables...

“Old Badger and this guy were tight,” Waine explained. “Probably hung out with each other the most.”

“Really?” That surprised me. I couldn’t picture someone like Old Badger spending time with someone as sparkly as Peridot. They seemed like total opposites. What did they even have in common?

Waine’s gaze was distant, and a small nostalgic grin crept onto his face. “Old Badger used to say, ‘Flatter that guy a li’l bit, an’ he’ll buy drinks for ya.’ He’d mooch off Peridot all the time.”

Um... Was he trying to make that sound less bad by being all sentimental about it?

Peridot was unfazed. “Hmph. Old Badger never buttered people up. He always meant every word he said.” He smiled softly like he was reminiscing about a warm memory.

It was definitely hard to picture Old Badger flattering anyone, and it was just as hard to imagine the weird guy in front of me treating Old Badger coldly or brushing him off. I never saw them together, so I could only guess what their relationship was like. But, as fellow eccentrics, maybe there was some kind of mutual trust between them.

“Ah, Kiriand, your hands have stopped moving. Didn’t I say eating was part of your training? Eat up. While you’re at it, I’d love for you to tell me about Old Badger. Take your time and be as detailed as you can.” Peridot beamed cheerfully as he pushed more food my way.

“Guess he’s getting your name wrong too, huh, kiddo?” Waine muttered.

I felt like it was time to give up on correcting Peridot. Kiri and Kiriand were close enough anyway, and Kiriand was better than Waine getting a whole new name every time.

Peridot had said, “Take your time and be as detailed as you can.” Maybe he had gotten all this food so we could talk for as long as we needed. In that case, I was pretty sure he and Old Badger had really been friends. He knew Old Badger had spent time teaching me, so I could understand why he would want to hear what I had to say.

He had lost his friend, but he probably hadn’t even found out until much later. Even though he wore that dazzling smile, I knew the sadness and loneliness that had flashed across his face earlier were feelings he carried in his heart.

I sat up straight and began to talk about Old Badger. “The first time I met him was at the front desk. He came in carrying this giant basket full of herbs, and I talked to him after that.”

I did my best to be clear, accurate, and easy to follow. There was no need to dig deep into my memories, because I thought about Old Badger every single day. All I had to do was share. I felt tears in my eyes as I talked about him, but I wanted to—I knew I had to—tell Peridot everything.

“We had our first conversation over by the wall with the requests. I learned later that he used to check those postings every day to make sure he wasn’t getting too close to any monsters. Anyway, that’s where I asked him if he had any tips for gathering herbs, but he didn’t really give me the kind of advice I was hoping for.”

“What did Old Badger say?”

“He looked really troubled, then pointed to this herb on one of the requests. Nacturus, I think? He told me, ‘Don’t pick it yet.’ Now that I think about it, I probably just caught him off guard. I asked him out of nowhere, and that might’ve been the only thing that popped into his head.”

“Hmph, that sounds just like him. He was never good with kids. I bet you talking to him out of the blue really surprised him.”

Peridot really did know Old Badger. I felt like I’d just learned something new about the old adventurer. It made me think, So he had a friend like this, huh.

I grabbed a chunk of cheese from a platter along with some salted fish and a boiled sausage. Then I filled my plate with pasta full of clams and shrimp. Having something to eat would give me time to think about how to tell the next part. I tossed a piece of sausage into my mouth, chewed slowly, and swallowed.

“The next time I saw him was...”

I remembered how he carved his way through the mountain trails with his kukri in hand—how he stood his ground and never backed down when those three adventurers argued with him.

I remembered hearing he was taking bets on why I kept coming to the guild, learning he used to be a slave before becoming an adventurer, and seeing those stunning purple flowers blooming at the first mana pool.

“Sniff... Sniff... Ungh...” Thinking about Old Badger made my eyes water even more.

I thought about how he was always sarcastic and even a little mean, but he was serious when it mattered. I thought about the night when we all shared the alligator meat Waine and the others brought back to the guild, and the rainy day when he showed me that old map and taught me where I could find other mana pools.

One day, he told me he would retire and grow herbs at the physician’s guild. After that, he scolded me for wanting to gather herbs for the rest of my life. We didn’t meet up the next day, and that was when he died.

“With help from Waine, Sheya, and Chikka, I went on a goblin hunt to avenge Old Badger.”

I finished the whole story, slowly and carefully, without leaving any details out. Not a single tear was left in my eyes by the end.

On the other hand, across the table...

“U-Ugh... Ngh... Bwaaaaaah!”

Peridot’s once-handsome face was now a complete mess of snot and tears. He tried to clean up with a handkerchief, but the thing was already too soaked and sticky to do him any good.

So that’s how it works. When someone bawls their eyes out in front of you, it makes you not wanna cry anymore.

“Uuugh... Sniff... I see. I see, Kiriand. Thank you. I’m truly grateful. Your time together must have been full of warmth and meaning!” Peridot declared.

“Uh, you’re welcome.” If that was how Peridot felt about spending time with Old Badger, maybe their friendship had been special to Old Badger too.

“I see, I see. I understand completely now. Thank you for sharing all of that with me. Truly. I will repay this kindness someday, I promise you.”

“Huh? No, really, you don’t need to. I mean, you already treated me to this meal.”

“I was Old Badger’s friend, you know. A trifle like this meal hardly counts as repayment. By the way, there is one thing I’m curious about. In the story you just told me, where were your two friends from earlier?”

I could see why Peridot would wonder about that. He’d already met Liluetta and Yune at the stable, so hearing nothing about them during this whole story probably seemed strange.

“I met Liluetta and Yune after all of that,” I explained. “We just kind of ended up gathering herbs together, and now we’re officially in a party.”

That was all I needed to say. We’d had our share of adventures, but there was no need to go into all the details like I did with Old Badger. I didn’t think Peridot would be interested anyway.

“Ah, I see. That means your party is still pretty new, isn’t it? No wonder you’ve been living in the stable. Money’s always tight at first. You probably don’t have enough to spare for lodging.”

“You lived in the stables too, right after you bought your damn horse.” Waine threw in some snark while still picking at the food on the table.

Peridot swept his hair back with a calm smile. “Hmph. That was a period of deep bonding with Mercetino as we shared meals and sleep to strengthen our connection.”

He used to live in the stables too... Somehow, finding out we had something in common made me feel a little closer to him.

“As the leader of Seabird Tempest,” said Peridot, “the highest-ranking party at the Raging Kelpie’s Tail, allow me to offer you a piece of advice.”

Huh? I was pretty sure I’d just misheard him. But... He did say the Raging Kelpie’s Tail, though... So... He’s the leader of the top-ranked party in this guild?!

I glanced at Waine out of the corner of my eye. This seemed like the right moment for him to say something snarky again, but he just kept eating meatballs.

If Waine’s not denying it, does that mean it’s really true?

Peridot definitely didn’t seem like the type. And honestly, I still didn’t totally get how he was ever friends with Old Badger. At this point, I was even starting to question whether this place was really okay if he was the best. I was so confused, and all I could do was sit there.

He was almost glowing like the sun when he smiled and flashed his perfect white teeth at me. “A party leader’s job,” he said, “is to make the party shine. If you can do that, you’ll be out of the stable in no time.”

Advice from the leader of Seabird Tempest...

“One more thing—a bit of personal advice from me to you.”

You didn’t even give me time to think about the first piece of advice... And what makes this advice different?

With a playful wink and a smug-sounding hmph, Peridot jabbed his thumb at himself. “You should aim to become like me.”

***

Going into the stable at night always made me a little nervous because it was so dark. It was already dark outside, and stepping into the stable made everything vanish into black. I stopped and waited until my eyes adjusted enough to see faint outlines, then carefully walked step-by-step with my hand on the wall the whole time.

Liluetta’s light magic was amazing. With that, darkness wouldn’t be a problem at all. I decided the spell I wanted to learn most was light, not detection.

“Urp...” I pressed a hand to my mouth.

Just walking was enough to make me feel like everything in my stomach was about to come back up. Darkness wasn’t the only reason I was moving so slowly. I was pretty familiar with the stable’s layout by now, so I usually walked faster than this. But my stomach was way too full. I hadn’t felt this stuffed since my younger big brother brought back a huge catch from a hunt one time.

All the food at dinner tonight had tasted great, but having to continue eating well after I was stuffed was brutal. “This is part of your training. It’ll make you stronger,” Peridot had said with that sparkly smile of his. I couldn’t say no to that, so I kept eating. Now my stomach was so bloated, it honestly hurt.

“Thank goodness Waine showed up,” I said.

In the end, Waine had eaten more than either of us even though no one had invited him. He’d just barged into our conversation and hovered beside the table, stealing food the whole time. That wasn’t a very cool thing to do, I thought. It’s not right. But Peridot would’ve made me eat even more if Waine hadn’t been there, and I definitely would’ve thrown up... I should be grateful. I was lucky Waine didn’t really care about manners.

With one hand still on the wall, I slowly made my way through the dark stable. My legs were a little shaky, and tripping and falling now would be a disaster, so I moved really carefully. When I reached the third stall, I spotted a large silhouette barely outlined by starlight trickling in through the window. Valen—no, Mercetino—was fast asleep.

“Mercetino, your owner’s a pretty weird guy, huh?” I whispered.

There was no reply. That was normal, so I kept talking.

“How do you even be like that?”

“You should aim to become like me.” That was what Peridot had said. I’d smirked a little at those words, at first. He was so different from me that I had a hard time thinking of him as a fellow human being. I wondered if he was actually a member of some look-alike species, but I couldn’t imagine a whole race of people like him either. That would be terrifying. Still, if I could be like that... I had to admit, living a life like Peridot’s did look kind of fun.

Mercetino, of course, still didn’t respond. I moved past his stall and made my way to the very back. Still clutching my overstuffed belly, I slipped inside the last stall and collapsed onto the straw bed.

“Make the party shine...” I mumbled.

Sleepiness was hitting me fast because I was so full, but I hadn’t forgotten about my assignment—to think about the advice I’d gotten from the leader of Seabird Tempest, the top-ranked party at the Raging Kelpie’s Tail. I had a feeling that advice could come in handy during the talk I was going to have with Liluetta tomorrow.

“Liluetta... Yune...” I murmured their names.

A mage and a healer... Magic users were special and highly valued as adventurers, but I could only gather herbs. Under normal circumstances, they would never team up with someone like me. We’d formed an official party after making it through a lot together, but I couldn’t help thinking they were wasting their potential.

It might have seemed like I’d saved Liluetta and Yune during the goblin fight, but they never would’ve been in that situation if they’d been part of a proper party. With their magical skills, I was sure they could’ve found a better party easily. Compared to me, those two were more capable in just about every way.

“Ah.” The sound slipped out of my mouth. I had just realized something so obvious, I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to see it. It was kind of embarrassing. The pain in my stomach eased, and I felt my arm relax and plop onto the straw. Between everything that had happened today and how full I was, I could no longer stay awake after that thought had become clear to me. So I let myself drift off to sleep.

What I had realized was simple: My party had two special magic users.

***

“So why’d you say all that crap to the kid? Barque’s gonna snap if more weirdos like you start popping up.”

I bit through the last bit of cartilage from a chicken wing with a crunch and tossed the bone onto one of the many empty plates littering the table. That was pretty much the last of the food. There were still some pickled vegetables left, but I wasn’t touching those. The pickles here—hell, in this whole town—were way too salty for my taste.

One time, I saw workers dig the stuff out of a literal block of salt, and the ridiculousness of that almost made me pass out. No one inland would ever make pickles by burying them in salt. I’d heard it was a preservation method unique to port towns with salt flats, but what was the damn point if the end result was a pile of salt bombs?

Maybe it’s a “local specialty,” but unless it’s the dead of winter and there’s nothing else to eat, I’ll pass.

“Don’t you think I shine even brighter when someone looks up to me with admiration and tries to follow in my footsteps?” asked Peridot.

I sighed. “You’re doing it for yourself, huh.”

Peridot crunched into the leftover pickles like they were gourmet goods and washed them down all graceful-like with tea.

Well, he’s from this town. Guess I’m not surprised he can eat that stuff like it’s normal.

“Of course, I’m also doing it for his sake,” Peridot added. “Kids like him tend to survive easily enough, but they often lack ambition. Aiming to be someone like me is the perfect challenge.”

I licked the grease off my fingers and gave the smug bastard a half-lidded glare as he smiled that breezy, infuriating smile. Not that I could disagree with him.

Earlier, after all that talking and eating, the kid had gone back to the stable. He’d looked miserable, like he was about to burst. I’d told him to skip training for the night, since puking would be a huge mess and a waste of good food. It was pretty late for a kid to still be awake anyway. He’d just nodded and went straight to bed without a word.

That was a problem. For an adventurer, getting stronger meant being able to do more jobs. But that kid had given up an opportunity to train—to get stronger—without a second thought. So I agreed with Peridot. The kid was maybe a little low on ambition.

If you hand any other boy his age a stick, he’s gonna swing it around all day like it’s the coolest thing in the world. I sure did. Back then, training to fight was so fun I couldn’t imagine skipping it. In that kid’s shoes, I would’ve trained no matter how full I was. And then I would’ve puked and regretted everything, so maybe him heading back early was the right call.

“You do realize you’re the top-ranked adventurer in this guild, right?” I asked. “What if the kid takes you too seriously and pushes himself too hard?”

“I won’t do anything,” Peridot said flatly. “Adventurers chase danger, take risks, and die. I have zero intention of taking responsibility just because I offered a piece of advice or two. Even if I were responsible somehow, I would never choose to keep my advice to myself and deprive the world of my beautiful thoughts. That would simply be too painful.”

I clicked my tongue. Sure, Peridot was a weirdo. But he was a weirdo with principles. If anything, those principles were why he was so damn weird. A guy like him was a real pain and a lost cause, which was probably why he was an adventurer.

“Besides, Kiriand shows promise. I couldn’t help but meddle a little. His eyes are especially good—clear and beautiful. He might even have the makings of a hero one day.”

“Would you stop saying that to every kid in town? Barque was complaining about it again.”

“But everyone always seems happy to hear me say that kind of thing.”

I sighed without meaning to. Just Peridot being Peridot. Trading barbs with him is one thing, but taking him seriously wears me out fast. Kids love the guy, though.

“By the way, Vector, different topic. I heard you formed a new party?”

“It’s Waine. And it’s not like we officially formed anything. Just three solo types doing a few jobs together.”

“The details don’t matter to me. You’re talking about that gorgeous mage and the adorable halfling, right? I’ve seen the two of them around now and then.”

“‘Gorgeous’ and ‘adorable,’ huh? Their names are Sheya and Chikka. Seriously, man, can you at least try remembering your fellow adventurers’ names?”

“So it was the mage and the scout, huh? Excellent. Sounds like a great match.” Peridot flashed a grin and winked.

Oh crap. Here it comes.

“You ate quite a lot today, Gunbal. Was it tasty? Now, there’s a job I’d like to discuss. Surely you wouldn’t do something as unseemly as dine and dash, would you?”

“It’s Waine, damn it.”

***

“Whoooa. So we can pick any room we want?” Yune asked in awe.

“Yep! The first room at the top of the stairs is mine. Any other one’s fair game.” Teteni, the rabbit beastfolk with snow-white fur, replied with pride.

You’re just a tenant, though...

The inn Teteni had introduced us to was surprisingly nice. It was a fairly new two-story building close to the adventurer’s guild. The location was great, and the building was even hooked up to the town’s sewer system. White stone gave the structure a clean, elegant look, and the garden shrubs were neatly trimmed too. Every room inside was spotless.

This inn was smaller than Chikka’s lodgings, the rooms here were a bit more cramped, and there was no meal service. On the other hand, the rent was quite reasonable. And yet, Teteni was the only tenant.

“This place is really nice. Why are there so many vacant rooms?” I asked.

“Well, the landlord made a killing back in her adventuring days,” Teteni replied, “so she’s not interested in running the place for profit. Only female adventurers are allowed, and regular townsfolk aren’t welcome either. If something rough happened with a civilian, it’d turn into a whole thing, y’know?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t it still be a problem if adventurers got rough with each other?”

This former adventurer sounded like she could be a hassle to deal with. Her rank had probably been pretty high, if she’d made enough money to build a fancy inn in a prime location. But a top-tier adventurer didn’t necessarily have the skills to run a business. Most adventurers were probably used to solving problems by brute force, so normal jobs would be a challenge. I had a feeling the owner refused civilians because she just didn’t know how to deal with them.

“Oh, and female adventurers are kinda popular, y’know,” Teteni added.

Right. Getting a boyfriend meant getting kicked out. The ratio of men to women among adventurers definitely skewed heavily toward the former, and I was sure plenty of those men were quick to chase after women. Attraction or even romance could easily develop within a party, especially after working together a few times, and those same feelings could just as easily break the whole group apart.

“This isn’t bad at all. Yune, do you think we should go ahead and take it?”

“Of course!”

“Ooh, then you’re staying tonight, right? Right? You’re staying, right?!” Teteni bounced up and down like an actual bunny, but we were going to have to disappoint her.

“We still have to pack, so it’ll be a few days,” I said. “Besides, we’re not even sure if we can afford to move in.”

“Whaaa? Why not?”

“Because I don’t know if we can earn enough to pay for it.”

The rent was cheap, and sharing a room would lower our costs even more. Even so, based on how much we’d made gathering herbs today, it was still going to be tight.

“You know that boy who was with us? He lives in the stable. As much as I hate to admit it, our party’s earnings are at that level right now. We need to improve that as soon as possible, of course, but we can’t just decide to live here when we don’t have a plan to increase our income.”

“A plan? Can’t you just take a job that pays better?” Teteni asked.

That was easy for her to say. We’d gotten a harsh reality check during that goblin battle—a reminder that our skills were inadequate.

“You went herb gathering today, yeah? That kind of job’s more for solo adventurers. It’s one thing if you pick herbs while doing something else, but making herb gathering your main party activity’s a tough sell.”

Hold on a second. I felt my body tense up. “How exactly do you know we were out gathering herbs?”

Teteni answered right away. “The smell.”

With that, all of my suspicion melted away. Right. Beastfolk.

“You both reek of forest and herbs,” she continued, “and there’s no trace of blood scent at all. Super obvious.”

“Woooow, you’ve got a really good nose, huh?” Yune exclaimed.

“My ears are even better!”

Teteni was basically born to be a scout. Beastfolk were naturally athletic too, as if they had been tailor-made for adventuring. I was a little envious, to be honest.

“You two look like spellcasters. Am I right? You don’t seem like ranger types, so you don’t really look like you’d be great at herb gathering either. What are you good at?”

“We can use offensive and healing spells,” I explained. “Our scout is the other—”

Teteni didn’t let me finish. “Then you do have other kinds of jobs you can take.”

Of course. Magia users were uncommon, so surely there were people who wanted to hire Yune and me for our abilities. I already knew that. But those jobs and requests would center around magia, which meant success and failure would depend entirely on the two of us.

“‘Hmph. If you’re scared by something like that, you’re not much of an adventurer, are you?’ That’s what our boss would say,” said Teteni.

She saw through me, she laughed at me, and she even did an impression of that weirdo to tease me. But she was right. I can only use basic spells right now, but I chose to become an adventurer. If I won’t even look at requests for magia users because of a confidence issue, then what am I even doing?

“You’re right. Thanks, Teteni. I’ll talk to Kiri about it tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Remembering the look on Kiri’s face when he’d shown us that stable made my anger flare up all over again. That was not okay, and I refused to accept that. I couldn’t just let things stay the same.

He saved my life, I chose to walk this path with him, and we decided to form a party together. Yune and I absolutely cannot hold him back.

Smack! I slapped both of my cheeks with my hands and felt motivation rush through me. I was going to become useful and reliable, and I had a clear and tangible goal: We’ll help Kiri earn enough to sleep in proper lodgings. Doing that will prove I’m a valuable member of this party.

Chapter 2: New Request, New Sparring Partners

The adventurer’s guild was buzzing, and I worked my way through the crowd to the wall of requests. I took my time reading one after another, carefully checking each description and getting a feel for what was available. I hadn’t read this many notices since my very first day here. I did check the board every day, but that was only to learn the names of places and confirm monster locations like Old Badger had taught me.

Looking at the listings to find real work—the most basic adventuring task—was something I had only done when I’d first joined the guild. Herb gathering had been the only thing I could handle back then, but now I had proper equipment and some training too. So I figured I was in better shape than before, at least.

But that didn’t really make new jobs available to me. There was no way I could accept monster extermination requests, because all of them looked terrifying. The only one I could maybe do was the sewer rat job Waine had taken before. But I knew Liluetta and Yune would hate it, so I threw that idea out.

That was fine, though. Those weren’t the types of jobs I was looking for. I kept reading the requests on the board, one after another: monster extermination, escort missions along trade routes, guard duty for farms or salt flats, deliveries and purchases for other towns and villages, resource collection, investigating unusual events, simple physical labor, assisting with magical experiments... There was even one for shearing sheep. That brought back memories of seasonal chores back in my village. This was the right time of year for that. I’d never done it myself, though, so I probably couldn’t take that request either.

Wow... So many different kinds of people live in this town. Just looking at the huge variety of requests really drove that home for me.

A sharp voice rang out. “Found you, Kiri!”

When I turned around, I saw a girl with cherry-red hair practically shoving people aside as she charged through the crowd. Trailing behind her was another girl with bouncy chestnut-brown hair. She was bowing and apologizing to the people they bumped into along the way.

“Morning, Liluetta. Morning, Yune. How was the inn Teteni introduced you to?” I asked.

“Good morning, Kiri,” Liluetta replied. “The inn wasn’t bad. More importantly, we need to talk.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got something to talk about too.”

Liluetta looked mad. But when I said “morning” to her, she did say it right back. So I could tell she wasn’t that angry. She actually seemed more desperate than anything, like she was worried and in a big hurry too.

I was pretty sure she was trying to do something about my living situation now that she’d found out about it. Even I could understand that much. Liluetta kind of had a temper sometimes, but she was a good person.

“I realized something,” I told her. “We might be able to take on something other than herb-gathering requests because of the two of you. So I’ve been looking to see if there’s anything good.”

“Th-That’s it!” Liluetta exclaimed. “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about! Even if we can’t make money gathering herbs, there has to be better work out there. We should look together!”

“Yeah. Like this one, maybe.” I pointed at one of the postings on the wall. “But it means you’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting, Liluetta.”

Survey was written across the top of the request. Just below that were two words that stood out: mage required.

Mages and healers were valuable. There weren’t many at the guild, and I’d heard that basically no ordinary townsperson could use magic. Of course, such rare skills were worth a lot of money. So anyone who needed a mage had to make a request at the guild and offer payment, even if whatever task or job they had wasn’t all that difficult. In other words, having a magic user opened up a lot more job options for any party. It had taken me way too long to realize that.

“Oh! You’re the ones who accepted the survey request?”

The person greeting us was a broad-shouldered man with burly arms and sideburns that blended right into his thick beard. He had a loud voice that matched his huge body. His hair and beard were both dark, and his appearance reminded me of a bear. He wore tough-looking work clothes, and he had thicker arms than the warriors at the guild. Of course, he looked way stronger than me.

The location listed on the request was a huge shop. I was shocked that a place like this even existed because of what it sold: bricks. Just bricks, period. Stacks and stacks of bricks in all different colors and shapes were piled up inside the shop, while rows of bricks outside were drying in the sun. In the back, an enormous kiln roared with fire. You could call it a construction materials shop, but they were clearly brick specialists. Towns really were something else. There was definitely nothing like this in my village.

“Yes, I’m Liluetta, the mage who accepted the request. These two are my party members, Yune and Kiri. The request was for a survey of clay mining sites, correct? You’re hoping to locate a new source of high-quality clay. Would you mind explaining the details?”

More surprising than the shop was Liluetta stepping up to handle negotiations. I’d never seen her smile like that before. Her voice was higher than usual, her words were polite and smooth, and even her posture was graceful and refined. She was like a completely different person.

“Don’t worry, that’s just her formal public persona,” Yune whispered to me. “The young lady was raised as a Magnan and trained in the fine art of commerce.”

If Yune hadn’t told me that, I might’ve started thinking Liluetta had caught some weird illness. It was good to know that was just how she did business.

Before we’d gotten here, Liluetta had told me, “You’re a country boy, so keep your mouth shut during client meetings.” I knew I couldn’t pull off what she was doing, but I still thought that wasn’t very nice of her to say. Now that I was seeing her in action, though... Maybe it’s best to leave negotiations to her. Merchants are scary.

“You’re a sharp one, young lady,” the big man said with a nod of approval. “Here’s the situation. We’ve had a sudden surge of large brick orders lately. At this rate, we’re gonna run out of clay.” He scratched his beard. “It all started when that new section of the sewer system was discovered. Construction projects are all over town now, and craftsmen are swamped.”

“Ah, yes!” Liluetta replied brightly. “I’ve heard some rumors about that. Apparently, several merchant families have already begun building new shops. Even the physician’s guild, which used to be on the outskirts, has decided to relocate.”

“Oh, you’re well-informed.” The man grinned. “That’s right. Just having a sewer line nearby turns a worthless empty lot into prime real estate overnight. Business is booming, I’ll tell you what.”

“As a matter of fact,” Liluetta said, smiling, “that new section of the sewer was discovered by some of our veteran adventurer acquaintances. It makes me proud—honored, really—to know they’re helping bring so much life to the town.”

“Well, I’ll be!” The man roared with laughter. “You’ve got yourself some fine examples to look up to, don’t you? Gah ha ha!”

Merchants really are scary! “I’ve heard some rumors” and “It makes me proud—honored, really.” Both of those are lies. Liluetta knows what merchants are up to because she’s a Magnan, and she has zero respect for Waine, Sheya, and Chikka.

“Well,” the man went on, “it’s great to have work. But without materials, we’re dead in the water. So we figured we’d hire someone to dig more clay.” He paused, frowning as he stroked his thick sideburns. “The problem is location. Hiriyenka’s built on top of old ruins, so the soil in town doesn’t yield much clay. We usually dig outside the walls, but it’s not great for large-scale operations.”

I took another look around. The shop did feel kind of empty for its size. There was still plenty of room for more stock, and the stacks of bricks in here weren’t as high as I’d thought at first. I could see how a clay shortage was becoming a pretty serious problem for them.

“That’s why we figured now’s the time to look for a new clay site,” said the man.

“And that’s where a mage, specifically one with a detection spell, comes in,” Liluetta added smoothly.

“Exactly. As for what we need, first and foremost, the clay has to be high-quality. Stuff that discolors or crumbles after firing is useless to us. Second, the site needs to be as close to town as possible. A safe and easy spot to dig and transport from.”

As I listened to the man’s conditions, I thought about what we had to do. What he’s asking for makes sense, but finding a place that has everything he wants might not be so easy...

And that was why he wanted adventurers to help and had included mage required on his request. If we could use magic to find quality clay deposits, then all we would have to do was make sure what we found met his second condition.

Liluetta smiled another smile I’d never seen before. It was very charming, and a good look on her... Nope, that’s scary. I definitely feel more relaxed when she’s mad.

“Leave it to us,” she said. “If you can provide a sample of the clay you currently use, I can locate more in no time. I’m sure we can find something that meets your expectations.”

“Ohhh, that’s great news! Hang tight. I’ll go grab what I need.”

“Wha?” I’d meant to keep my mouth shut like Liluetta had told me to, but I was so surprised that a weird little sound had slipped out.

Liluetta and Yune both looked just as startled as I felt.

“Um, excuse me!” Liluetta called out to the man before he disappeared into the back of the shop. “This job is listed as a survey, right? You’re...coming with us?”

“Huh? Well, sure,” the man replied. “I’d like to see the site and the clay. Ah, right, right. I guess if I tag along, that means you’ll need to guard me. I should’ve mentioned it when I submitted the request. That’s on me, so let’s stop by the guild on the way and I’ll pay the extra fee. Sound fair?”

“Th-That should be fine. In terms of procedure, I suppose...” Liluetta trailed off.

“It’s settled! Business is booming right now. I’m not about to be a miser over something like this.” The bearlike man laughed heartily.

Liluetta responded with a strained smile. I glanced at Yune, and she glanced right back at me. We probably had the same expressions on our faces.

Today, we met a client face-to-face for the very first time and accepted their request. But thanks to Barque not double-checking the details, our job’s gonna be way harder than we expected...

***

“Ah, what a splendid day it is!” Peridot declared. “The sky is endlessly blue, the breeze is delightfully crisp, and the warm sunlight wraps around us like a gentle embrace. Don’t you agree it’s the perfect weather for a picnic?”

We were near the entrance to the Forest of Bedge, where dwarven lumberjacks had cleared the trees to open up the view. Peridot, the leader of Seabird Tempest, looked at each member of today’s party before nodding dramatically.

“My friends, today we venture out for a grand herb-gathering expedition!” He thrust his right fist up toward the sky in a pose that matched his loud, cheerful voice.

His gray horse neighed happily beside him, and the white-eared rabbit beastfolk was standing behind the horse yelling, “Yaaay!” with her arms up in the air.

So it’s a picnic today, huh. That’s funny. Could’ve sworn somebody told me this was a job.

I could feel Sheya and Chikka glaring from either side of me, so I had to say something.

“What, with this group?” I didn’t bother hiding how salty I felt.

Peridot walked ahead with a big grin on his face. “Brings back memories. I used to gather herbs all the time when I was just starting out as an adventurer!”

He was leading his horse by the reins down the forest trail. Riding it would be dangerous in terrain like this. Dense forests with uneven footing and obstacles weren’t good for mounted travel.

Don’t bring the damn horse if you know you can’t ride it, genius. You’re the one who wanted to come here.

“I spent a long time as a solo adventurer,” Peridot said, still smiling. “Even when I did join parties from time to time, I always ended up leaving. I just couldn’t find teammates who really suited me. Let me tell you, those days were full of hardship.”

“Blame your personality for that,” I muttered under my breath.

Peridot wouldn’t hear that, even if he could—I was pretty sure his ears were made to ignore anything he didn’t like. Well, I was on rear guard anyway. No point yelling just to talk to the guy. Talking to him in a normal voice was exhausting enough. Best to let someone else handle chitchat today.

“So, where are these amazing teammates you’re always bragging about? Isn’t Seabird Tempest a four-person party?” Chikka asked.

Well, our party’s designated talker had to be her in this situation. Sheya never talked much, and this was just how the formation shook out today. Not my fault.

“No, no,” Peridot replied, “four people and one horse. Mercetino is a proud member of the team too!”

Cut it out, Peri-dope. Chikka had to cancel her fishing plans today, so she’s in a foul mood. And I’m pretty sure the two of you are not gonna get along.

“Well, the rest of my team was passed out in front of the tavern this morning, so I left them there. Today’s just a scouting mission anyway, so I figured I’d let them rest,” Peridot explained.

Chikka rolled her eyes. “Still a bunch of drunks, huh. So what’s with the rabbit? She’s way ahead of us. I can barely see her.”

“Teteni’s very cautious. She tends not to show herself around unfamiliar people. But don’t worry. Her skills as a scout are solid. You can leave the recon to her.”

We weren’t deep in the woods, so there was no need for special formations or anything. But falling into a marching order was natural for adventurers. Teteni the rabbit beastfolk was our forward scout, and Chikka handled frontline awareness right behind her. Just behind Chikka were Peridot and his horse, followed by Sheya. I was bringing up the rear. No one had said a word about the lineup, but we did it anyway. Adventurer habits were so second nature to us by now, we couldn’t stop doing them even if we tried.

“All right,” Peridot said, gesturing to stop all of us. “I think it’s about time we start the detection spell, don’t you? Would you mind getting ready, my radiant mage?”

Already? I guess the herbs aren’t that deep in the woods.

“The characteristics of the herb?” Sheya asked.

“We’re looking for nacturus,” Peridot replied. “It’s used in magic and alchemy. You’ve heard of it, yes?”

I only really knew the names of basic herbs good for treating wounds, but I knew that one...because I’d heard about it yesterday. Never would’ve remembered otherwise.

“That the one the kid mentioned?” I asked.

“Good memory, Jails.” Peridot winked. “That’s the one. It’s listed on the permanent request board—a rare variety that’s hard to find.”

“It’s Waine, damn it,” I grumbled. “Didn’t the kid say it’s not even the right season for that herb yet? Why the hell are we out here looking for it?”

“Excellent question. Don’t worry, we’re not actually planning to harvest it. We’re just scouting today, remember? The truth is, back when I used to gather herbs, I never found nacturus. Not even once. I got all nostalgic when it came up in conversation yesterday. So I thought, why not? Let’s go see if we can find some.”

So you’re just doing this to kill time. You gotta be kidding me.

“But you see, my party has a scout but no mage. With a mage capable of detection, the difficulty of a search mission plummets. Having a second scout on top of that makes a perfect setup. I’m truly grateful for your cooperation.”

“Even if this is just a time waster, we’re still charging you the full fee,” Chikka shot back.

Judging from her sharp tone, she was probably thinking something like, If this is just a hobby herb hunt, do it by yourself. Honestly? Couldn’t agree more.

And I was just an extra here. The real asset was Sheya, and Chikka was that second scout Peridot wanted. If he’d told me that from the start, I could’ve just introduced them and skipped all this. I mean, this whole setup was ridiculous. Half of a Rank B party recruits a Rank C scout and a Rank C warrior plus a Rank D mage with skills above her grade just to go herb picking—er, searching. What a stupidly luxurious search party.

“Waine. About what he just said.” Sheya came up behind me all of a sudden, with the brim of her pointy hat dipping low to hide her eyes. She spoke so quietly that only I could hear her.

“Huh?” I assumed she didn’t want Peridot to catch any of this, but he was gonna notice us whispering at least.

“Who said it wasn’t the right season?” she asked.

“The kid. Wait, no, not exactly. He said Old Badger told him not to pick the herb because it was too soon or something.”

“I see.” Beneath the brim of her hat, Sheya’s lips twisted like something had just rubbed her the wrong way. “Nacturus is a perennial. The part used is mainly the root.”

“Pe-ren— What?”

“For that herb, the season doesn’t matter.”

“Huh? Wait— Oof!”

Before I could react, she kicked me hard right behind the knee. My leg buckled, and I went crashing face-first into a pile of dirt and leaves.

Ow, damn, that hurts. But that was my bad. She might’ve just saved me there.

“Oh my, such great teamwork. Perhaps the two of you should form an official party. It’s best when comrades get along so well!” Peridot cackled and started on some nonsense about sharing his valuable wisdom with us.

Well, he probably wasn’t wrong about teamwork and getting along. All the people in his party were weirdos who perfectly matched his particular brand of crazy. And no matter how eccentric he seemed, Peridot was the top adventurer at the Raging Kelpie’s Tail. He wasn’t just here for comic relief.

“Oh! If we find a spot where it grows in clusters, we should tell Kiriand!” Peridot clapped his hands together like he’d just come up with the best idea ever. “I bet he would be absolutely thrilled!”

As I watched him grin like a little kid, one thought stuck with me: There’s definitely some kind of ridiculous hidden catch here.

***

“That was rough,” I said quietly.

“It really was rough.” Yune sighed.

The two of us nodded as we stood in front of the guild’s request wall. We were the only ones looking at listings right now—it was early in the evening, and there were only a few other people scattered around the room. Mornings seemed like the only time I’d ever seen a crowd here by the requests, but I could’ve been wrong about that since I was still pretty new here.

“That brick shop guy just kept trying to charge ahead,” I said.

Yune agreed. “That’s right. He wouldn’t stop, even when we told him to...”

We were both complaining about the client from today’s job. Having him along had been more exhausting than the actual fieldwork.

“He was like, ‘Goblins are no big deal.’ He didn’t take them seriously at all,” I complained.

Yune frowned. “Even for adventurers, goblins are dangerous.”

“And then he goes, ‘If something happens, I’ll fight too!’ and starts swinging a pickaxe around.”

“Without wearing armor. He would’ve been in very serious trouble if we’d been attacked.”

“And he wanted to follow some suspicious footprints just to see where they led.”

“What if monsters were lying in wait? That’s very dangerous...”

As we continued reading the posted requests, Yune and I quietly traded complaints about how chaotic our client had been today. Sure, the guy was big and looked strong, but monsters didn’t come at you one-on-one and they didn’t fight fair. If we’d gotten ambushed, with him not wearing armor and charging ahead, it would’ve been a disaster. Today had not been easy, to say the least.

“You two. What exactly are you trying to say?” Liluetta was shaking a little as she spoke in a low, threatening voice.

I quickly turned to the closest request and pretended to focus on it. “We were just saying today was pretty intense.”

“Totally.” Yune nodded. Her eyes were also locked on the board.

Liluetta jabbed a finger at Yune. “Why are you acting like that?! This is on you too!”

“But you were the one giving orders today, my lady...”

“Oh, so we’re still bringing that up?!” Liluetta made a little noise like a baby chick crying out. Her face went bright red, and her eyes started watering a little.

Yeah, she was really embarrassed. The way the brick shop guy had kept pushing ahead reminded me of how Liluetta had acted right before the goblin fight. I think she’d realized it too. She’d looked pretty uncomfortable out there today. I mean, she’d had to watch someone else make all the same dumb mistakes she’d made before and then scold him for it. If that had been me, I probably would’ve run away.

That said, Liluetta had really done a great job. A few things hadn’t gone according to plan, but she’d handled the negotiations smoothly and used her detection magic to find a clay deposit. She’d even managed to slow the guy down with some long-winded business talk at the end of the day. I thought that was pretty clever of her. As for me, I’d just followed her instructions the whole time.

“Well,” I said, “at least we made it back in one piece. And the guy seemed pretty satisfied too.”

“Hmph. Obviously.” Liluetta crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks.

We might’ve teased her a little too much. Still, I felt a lot more relaxed now. This prickly version of her was way easier to deal with. That smiling, elegant face she’d used with the client was too scary.

“In any case, you two,” she said, straightening up, “we need to get serious about finding work tomorrow. What we heard today is proof that this town is already changing fast, which means now is a golden opportunity for adventurers. I know there are good requests out there for us.”

I agreed with Liluetta. That clay survey request had only been made because the town suddenly needed more building materials after the new sewer section discovery. All kinds of jobs were probably going to keep popping up. And with magic users in our party, we had more skills that could let us take more requests.

That meant we wouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail just to find a request we could take. If we looked carefully, even older ones that had been up for a while might still offer good terms for the right party.

“Make the party shine,” huh...

The three of us stood side by side at the wall of requests, and we pointed things out to each other and exchanged ideas as we read. At the same time, I kept thinking about those words and turning them over in my mind. I’d never made my party shine. I’d never even really understood what it meant to be in a party, because I’d never relied on Liluetta or Yune at all as teammates and comrades.

“Anyway,” Liluetta said decisively, “let’s not take any more jobs that involve guard duty.”

Yune and I both nodded.

***

“Tch...”

I heard someone click their tongue and stopped what I was doing to look up. There were two young warriors scowling in the same direction, their faces twisted in irritation. One had messy black hair and wide, glaring eyes. The other one was pale with his ash-brown hair tied back.

Those two were Nigu and Hilteeth, and they lived in the dorm on the second floor. After joining the guild six months ago, they were still Rank F and just barely getting by with rat-hunting jobs. They were reasonably serious about their work, but half a year of adventuring without ranking up was on the slow side.

That said, it wasn’t unusual for adventurers to stay stuck in Rank F. Working as a duo had a lot to do with it. Numbers mattered, plain and simple. Solo adventurers and pairs tended to advance more slowly than parties of three or more. Besides, these two had a pretty obvious weak point.

I looked toward what they were glaring at and saw a party standing near the requests wall: the boy who used to be mentored by Old Badger, the mage girl who was supposedly Magnan’s granddaughter, and her healer companion. They were just kids, but one of them was from a rich merchant family and two of them used magic. For a Rank F party, they were strange and stood out a lot.

“Somethin’ happen with them?” I asked.

“Not like it matters,” the one with black hair grumbled. “It’s got nothing to do with you, Barque.”

“If it’s got somethin’ to do with trouble in my guild, it sure as hell matters to me.”

That shut him up. Something had happened—that was pretty damn obvious—but fights or spats between adventurers were way too common to even make the gossip rounds. I finished counting out their reward based on the number of rat tails they’d turned in and put the coins on the counter. As usual, they left just enough to cover their rent and pocketed the rest.

“We’re not gonna cause trouble. But we can’t just let it slide.” The pale one with long hair pouted. The other one nodded.

So they weren’t planning to cause trouble for the guild, but they were planning to stir something up.

“Don’t go overboard.” I sighed. Run an adventurer’s guild long enough, and you start to understand how things go. These types never listen—not even to the leader of their own guild. In the end, only adventurers can settle trouble between adventurers.

***

Clack. Clack, clack. Clack. The sharp rhythm of wood striking wood rang out under the moonlight. Waine had only used a little twig during our training before, but he’d started using a stick ever since I’d caught him cheating during my browplate-smacking drills.

“Urgh...”

“What’s the matter, kiddo? You’re slower than usual tonight!”

I barely blocked his strike in time and staggered back. Just doing that made my stomach churn.

“S-Sorry. I think I overate at dinner.”

“Huh?”

“I...want to grow bigger...faster...”

Yesterday, I’d learned about eating a lot to help my body grow. I kept it up today because I had to. That was something else I’d realized after our job today—even though Liluetta and Yune hadn’t said anything, I was the real reason the brick shop guy had refused to listen to us.

Compared to other adventurers, our party looked really tiny. Liluetta was small for her age. Yune, the oldest out of all three of us, was still shorter than most guys her age. I was the smallest, which was bad enough, but it was worse because I was supposed to be our vanguard fighter. Even I thought I looked unreliable.

That guy had probably never thought we were supposed to be protecting him. He’d only paid extra because he wanted to check the site himself and could afford to throw a little money around. Maybe he’d even been thinking he would protect us. He was much bigger, stronger, and older than us, after all. When he looked at our party, he probably saw three small, young, and unreliable rookie adventurers. He might’ve really thought he would need to save us if anything bad had happened.

I knew he’d had good intentions, and it’d all worked out because there’d been no monsters out there today. But if we’d gotten into a fight, and he’d tried to charge to the front, we wouldn’t have been able to keep him safe.

“I just want to look stronger. Even a little would be fine.”

Being weak was something I could live with, but looking weak was way worse. It would be different if my job was to stay out of the front line, but no one would take a small, unreliable-looking warrior in the vanguard seriously. Adventurers needed to look trustworthy. Otherwise, the client might back out even before you get to negotiate. That was why I wanted to get bigger, and Peridot had taught me how.

“Ugh...” I pressed against my stomach with my hand.

I really shouldn’t have eaten that much before training, though. Being here was kind of pointless if I couldn’t even move. The guild stayed open pretty late, so I should’ve eaten after this.

“Hmph.” Waine tapped his shoulder with his stick. “That advice from Peri the other day, huh? Damn, kids really love that guy... Anyway, building your body’s important. It’s not a bad thing.”

“You’re not mad?” I asked hesitantly. “You went out of your way to train me and everything.”

Waine seemed to have a lot of free time, but today he’d gone out on a job. He’d said he’d spent the whole day walking without finding anything, and he was planning to go again tomorrow. So he wasn’t just killing time by training me. He was making room in his schedule to be here. That meant a lot to me, even if this was just a little bit of light exercise for him. He was being really thoughtful, but I still messed up by eating too much...

“All right,” he said, “since we’re here, I’ll beat it into your body—how to move even when you’re full.”

Oh. We’re still gonna train.

“Listen up, kiddo. As adventurers, we gotta fight when trouble shows up. Doesn’t matter if you’re full, starving, injured, poisoned, sick, dead tired, drunk off your ass, or just got dumped by the girl of your dreams. If something comes at you, you fight. If you don’t wanna end up making excuses after you’re dead, then you better make sure you can fight no matter what!”

That speech was a lot, but it makes sense...

Waine stepped toward me, and I held up my stick to guard.

From now on, I’m definitely eating dinner after training.

Under the bright moonlight, our after-dinner exercise was becoming an intense training session. Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement—two figures were watching us, but I couldn’t make out their faces. I didn’t know how long they’d been standing there, but I couldn’t ignore them now that I’d noticed.

I heard an annoyed-sounding sigh from Waine. Of course, if I’d noticed those two, then Waine must’ve seen them too. I snuck a glance at his face during my next attack. He easily dealt with my moves while his eyes were locked on the onlookers.

He’s not even looking at me, and I still can’t land a single attack. How is he doing this?

“Waine, did you do something to those guys?” I asked.

“Hey, why’d you assume I messed up?” he asked back.

I went for a low strike at his legs, but Waine just flicked it away like it was nothing. He redirected my swing without stopping it at all, and the sudden shift threw me off—I stumbled and left myself open.

His fist came flying and bonked me right on the browplate.

It didn’t hurt, but it still made me groan.

Waine turned toward the two shadowy figures. “What do you want, Nigu? Hilteeth?”

So he knows them. They’re not strangers.

The two figures didn’t respond to Waine. They looked at each other, exchanged a few hand signals, then shook their heads. I didn’t really get it, but being able to talk without saying anything was kind of impressive.

“I said, what do you want? Can’t remember how to use your mouths?” Waine’s voice was strangely low, and I couldn’t tell if he was mad at them or trying to threaten them. I’d never heard him like this before, which was really throwing me off. Who were these guys who made him talk like that?

“Nothin’,” muttered one of them. “Nothin’ serious, Waine-bro.”

“Just waitin’ so we wouldn’t get in our bro’s way,” added the other.

“Uh, Waine, are these your younger brothers?” I asked.

Waine shook his head. “Nah. We all bunk in the dorm, so they call me bro ’cause they’ve gotten attached.”

Right, Waine did say he lived there. He didn’t seem like the type to care about noise or space, so the dorm was probably fine for him.

Those two came closer. When the moonlight shone on their faces, I accidentally let out a small “ah.” They were the two warriors who had once tried to recruit Liluetta.

“It’s just kinda unfair, you know? That brat,” the guy with black hair said to Waine.

“Huh?” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but his sharp glare was definitely focused on me.

The guy with the long, tied-back hair kept his eyes fixed on Waine. “Yeah. It’s not fair. He gets one-on-one training and the rest of us don’t.”

Oh. I get it now. Waine had been training me, but I’d never seen other adventurers doing anything like this. In a way, it really was special treatment. Since these two were close enough to Waine to call him bro, I could see how this would feel unfair to them.

“What, don’t tell me you guys wanna join...” Waine trailed off.

“Yeah,” said the long-haired guy.

“Yup,” said the black-haired guy.

Waine let out a long, long sigh.

I knew Waine was a strong warrior, but this reminded me just how strong he was. Young warriors looked up to him and wanted to learn from him. Old Badger had even told me that Waine’s old party fell apart because he was too strong.

“All right, fine.” Waine scratched the back of his head. He looked like he really didn’t want to do this. Then he seemed to change his mind all of a sudden. He slapped his hand against his chest with a thump and grinned. “Might as well. Starting today, I’ll train the two of you too.”

Nigu and Hilteeth lit up. I could see their bright, happy expressions in the moonlight.

Waine shrugged when he saw their reaction. He placed his hand on my head. “But only if you can beat him,” he said.

Huh?

“All right, here’s the deal. Nigu’s a loudmouth punk. Always yelling, won’t shut up. He’ll probably just rush in with everything he’s got, so stay cool, dodge smart, and land one solid hit.”

“I can hear you, Waine-bro.”

I couldn’t tell if Waine’s explanation was trash talk or actual advice. But since the guy he was talking about heard him too, I figured I didn’t have to think about it too much. So I let my shoulders drop, exhaled, and gripped the stick in my hand. A few paces in front of me, the guy with the messy black hair—Nigu—stood with a wooden stick like mine.

The two of us faced each other in the moonlight. Nigu was probably around fifteen, with scary-looking, wide-set eyes. I had to fight him first, but I wasn’t sure why we were even fighting. Couldn’t we all just train together? I’d definitely be fine with that.

And what was with the “but only if you can beat him” condition anyway? Nigu and Hilteeth were clearly bigger and stronger than me. I couldn’t imagine myself winning against either of them. What was the point of fighting?

“Believe in yourself, kiddo,” Waine said. “You’ve been training with me for a while now. You’re not the clueless amateur who went into the forest unarmed and got dragged out by Chikka yelling at you the whole time. You’ve fought goblins now. You’ve got experience.”

“I guess I’ve improved since then...”

But Nigu was a real warrior, someone who’d probably been using weapons and training seriously for way longer than me. We were on totally different levels. That was why what Waine said next caught me completely off guard.

“Let me tell you something useful. Nigu and Hilteeth? Still Rank F. Haven’t even done a goblin extermination. You have more combat experience than both of ’em.”

I heard a “tch” from Nigu’s direction, but he didn’t argue. So it must’ve been true.

I was stunned. To me, Nigu and Hilteeth looked strong. Sure, compared to Waine, they were younger and their gear wasn’t as good. So I’d thought they were newer adventurers, but after seeing the decent equipment they had, the scrapes on their armor, and their thick wrists, I never would’ve thought they were the same rank as me. And I had more experience? Was that really possible?

“All right, get in there.” Waine put his hand on my back and shoved me into the fight.

Nigu, with his wooden stick in hand, kept glaring at me. “Aren’t we gonna get, like, a starting signal or something?”

“Nope. Start whenever.”

Nigu snorted through his nose. He was clearly not happy to hear that.

Guess that means we already started. Okay. I’ll think about that combat experience thing later. I gripped my stick like a spear and lowered my stance, spreading my feet apart, turning my body sideways, and shifting my weight back. I pointed the tip of my weapon at my opponent.

“Combat experience, huh,” Nigu said. “Hey, kid. I hear you need something like goblin extermination experience to rank up. How come you’re still Rank F if you already did that?” He didn’t even bother getting ready. Both of his arms hung at his sides.

Nigu had a point, though. Since I’d fought goblins and won, not going up a rank was kind of weird. I wasn’t going to think about it until after training, but now that he’d brought it up... I’d been with Waine, Sheya, and Chikka for my first goblin fight. Their ranks were much higher than mine, and I’d just been tagging along, so I understood why that didn’t count. But the second time was different. Liluetta, Yune, and I were all rookies, and I’d fought my way out of a really bad situation and won. Shouldn’t that have fulfilled Rank E requirements?

“See, killing a goblin is a benchmark of strength,” said Nigu, his voice getting louder and louder. “If you’re barely scraping through by the skin of your teeth, you’re not ready to rank up!!!”

His voice was so loud I could feel my ears vibrate, and I flinched. My stance faltered, and I took a step back.

Nigu lifted his stick up high. He didn’t do it very quickly because his arms had been at his sides until now, and I could tell he wasn’t thinking about defense at all. He was so full of openings that, for a moment, I didn’t know what to do.

Wait, if I step in right now, I can hit him—

“Take this!” With a shout, Nigu swung his stick down.

It was a raw, heavy overhead blow from someone taller and stronger than me, and I didn’t think I could block that. So I leaped back with all my might and dodged.

“Get back here!” Nigu charged forward again.

This time, it was a sweeping horizontal blow. I couldn’t dodge, but I did defend in time to block the hit with my stick. Still, the weight behind Nigu’s attack was too much, and I stumbled back.

This is bad.

“What’s the matter? That all you got?!” Nigu taunted.

Another huge attack, his third full-power swing, was on its way. I gritted my teeth.

Waine had told me that Nigu fought by rushing in with everything he had, and he was right. Nigu had heard Waine tell me that, but he still came at me without changing how he attacked. In other words, he’d decided he didn’t need to change anything because I looked small and weak.

I clenched my teeth harder. When Nigu’s stick came crashing down, I hurled my body out of the way, rolling across the dirt and putting distance between us. Then I pushed off the ground with both hands to get to my feet and back into stance.

Now I understood. That loud voice of his was a problem because it made me flinch. That was why I couldn’t attack earlier. Those wild swings were a problem too. Even if I dodged or blocked, they knocked me off-balance and made it impossible for me to control the fight. On top of that, Nigu’s bugged-out eyes were scary. He was a big problem.

“So this is what it means to look strong,” I muttered. After those three attacks, I knew—if Nigu had gone on the survey job with us today, the brick shop guy would’ve accepted his protection without a problem.

“Quit running, damn it!” Nigu was shouting again.

A solid step forward with a big swing, along with that crude voice and those glaring eyes—he was trying to scare me with every move and every part of his body. That was how Nigu made himself look strong. But he was only a Rank F adventurer, just like me. Compared to Waine or the goblins I’d fought, he wasn’t actually scary at all.

I lowered my hips and raised my stick. I let out a sharp exhale and held my breath. Don’t underestimate me, I thought.

“Raaah!”

“Hyaaa!”

We both yelled. It was my spirit against his intimidation. I stepped forward.

“Just kidding.” Clack! Nigu knocked my stick away with his.

Wait, what?

“Gotcha.” Thwack. He nailed me in the forehead with his fist.

Owwww...

“All right, match over.” Waine almost sounded bored as he signaled the end of the fight.

“Not bad, kiddo. Good fighting spirit. You’re coming along. Compared to that, Nigu, you’re way too sloppy.”

“Yessir,” Nigu replied.

I stayed silent. Even though I’d lost, I was the one getting praised. Nigu had gotten scolded, but he didn’t seem the least bit sorry. That made me wonder if this wasn’t really about winning. Maybe Waine had something else in mind, like some kind of test, but it still didn’t sit right with me.

“Next, Hilteeth,” Waine called out.

“Right.” Hilteeth, with his ash-brown hair, took the stick from Nigu. He gave it two test swings, then turned to face me.

“Let’s have a good match,” he said.

“Right, let’s have a good match,” I replied.

Hilteeth lightly tapped his left shoulder twice with one hand. It seemed like some kind of formal gesture, so I quickly bowed my head in return.

Wow, he actually cares about proper etiquette. I didn’t know there were adventurers like this.

“Don’t let him fool you, kiddo!” Waine called out. “Hilteeth’s the sneaky, sly type who’s always pulling dirty tricks. Watch your back!”

Hilteeth didn’t flinch. He didn’t even react.

So that’s the kind of guy he is. I raised my stick like a spear again—it was the only stance I knew. Hilteeth turned so that the right side of his body was closer to me. He held his stick in his right hand like a sword, with the length of the weapon toward me instead of the point. His weight was shifted back. Even I could tell he was in a defensive stance.

Turning your body sideways made you a smaller target, holding your weapon like that made it like a shield, and keeping your weight back made it easier to retreat. But, more than anything, Hilteeth’s eyes and expression told me he wouldn’t make the first move. He was like the complete opposite of Nigu. So this time, I would have to go first... But I didn’t want to charge into someone who was clearly waiting for me to do just that.

As a test, I aimed for Hilteeth’s sword hand with a small, quick jab. “Yah!”

He dodged it with a single step back, but I’d expected that. I pulled my stick back right away and struck again. A clean, sharp crack rang out as he blocked. My two-hit opener had failed, so I backed off. Hilteeth didn’t pursue.

From that, I knew Hilteeth still wasn’t going to take the initiative. He wasn’t even looking for a chance to counter, which made him really hard to deal with.

“Hmph.” I aimed at his hand again, then stopped my stick in the middle of my attack to see how he would react.

Hilteeth dodged again with a single step back. He didn’t seem to mind retreating against someone smaller and weaker than him. But if I push too hard, he’ll probably counter... This is tough. How am I supposed to attack him?

“Hey. Do you know why we’re fighting?” Hilteeth asked. He didn’t sound hostile like Nigu. It seemed like he really wanted to talk.

“Why?”

“Sparring with the same person over and over makes you pick up bad habits. That’s why our bro’s having you fight us. He wants you to gain experience.” The moonlight revealed a faint, self-deprecating smile on his pale face. “In other words, no matter how you look at it, we’re just extras. Even if we win and start training with you, it’s still just part of helping you grow. We’re being used as tools to make you stronger.”

“Th-That’s not...” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

Was that really true? I still didn’t understand what Waine had been thinking when he’d started training me. Was I really worth that much attention?

“I’m jealous,” Hilteeth continued. “I can see you have talent, and you’re still young. There’s no such thing as a warrior who starts training at your age and doesn’t get strong. Our bro’s convinced you’ll be powerful someday. You’re incredibly lucky to have someone like him watching out for you. Ah, I’m really jealous now.”

Oh. I get what he’s doing. “You’re lying,” I said.

Hilteeth was sneaky, sly, and full of dirty tricks. He tried to throw me off-balance with empty flattery when he didn’t even need to. He already had the upper hand.

“Caught me, huh.” Hilteeth smirked, then adjusted his stance. He shifted his weight forward and pointed his stick straight at me. Now he was just looking down on me without any fake flattery or lies. “All right, let’s do this for real.”

He stepped forward and swung his stick in a shallow, sweeping arc with one hand. The strike had much less power and weight than Nigu’s, so I smashed it aside with my own stick. Hilteeth’s eyes went wide, and I glared at him. He was still just messing with me with that half-baked attack.

“Hyaaa!” I launched a clean strike of my own. My counter had knocked Hilteeth’s weapon aside, and he was still off-balance. He wouldn’t be able to dodge this attack. A critical hit—

“Just kidding.” Hilteeth flung his hand at me. It was his left hand—the hand he’d kept hidden behind his body since the match began.

“Argh!” A fistful of sand mixed with tiny pebbles hit me in the face. Some of it got in my eyes and blocked my vision, and I felt bits in my nose and mouth too. The pain made me yell again as I shrank back.

“A cheap trick is good enough for a kid, right?” Hilteeth tapped me on the shoulder with his stick.

Then I heard what I really didn’t want to hear.

“Match over,” said Waine.

***

“You did good not rushing in, but you messed up when the sand hit your eyes. Gotta push forward when that happens. Swing blindly and try to land a hit or wave your weapon around to keep the enemy away.” I gave the kid a little push toward the water basin. “Anyway, that’s enough for today. Go wash up. While you’re at it, think real hard about why you lost. And whatever you do, don’t rub your eyes.” I watched him stagger away with a hand pressed against his face. He’d heard what I said, at least, because he wasn’t rubbing his eyes.

I’d expected him to lose, but he’d done a pretty good job. Judging by the skill gap between the kid and the other two, it wouldn’t have been strange if he’d gotten wrecked tonight.

“He’s more capable than I thought. Wasn’t expecting him to hold his own for that long. He’s still rough around the edges, but his mindset’s solid. Maybe going through a real fight really does change people. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been giving him good advice. Either way, as the guy training him, it feels pretty damn satisfying.”

With my arms crossed, I nodded to myself. Maybe I do have a knack for teaching. What if I open a training hall someday? No way in hell, right? Well, I can save the someday talk for...someday. Now I need to deal with...

I turned around. “You two,” I growled. “You really think you can hold your heads up high after that, you damn scrubs?”

“...”

“...”

“Don’t you dare look away. Nigu, you thought you could just scare the little guy and demolish him ’cause he’s small, but you couldn’t even pull it off. That’s pretty pathetic.”

“I mean, I kinda had him at the end, didn’t I?”

“Like I said, you’re a mess. You put on a good show at first, looking all tough, but then you just kept swinging and leaving yourself wide open when your opponent stopped getting scared. You only won because you stopped yourself at the last second. You would’ve lost if you kept going, so don’t get cocky, dumbass.”

The bug-eyed punk rubbed his forehead and scowled before looking down. His strategy—yell loud and make your opponent flinch—wasn’t wrong. It was simple and effective because fear made it hard to react and move. Bandits, pirates, and street punks used this strategy all the time, and there was nothing stopping adventurers from doing the same.

Intimidation had worked on the kid at first, but Nigu’s mistake was thinking it would keep working. Once Nigu’s wide, sloppy swings had stopped scaring the kid, anyone could see he was full of openings. Raising your voice was fine, but not if it made your technique sloppy.

“And you, Hilteeth. I know you keep that sand trick on hand to mess with people because your personality sucks, but you ended up having to use it to bail yourself out. When you said that thing about getting bad habits from sparring with the same person, you were talking about yourself, you moron. You’ve only ever sparred with Nigu, right? So all you know is how to block and counter. You suck at taking the initiative.”

“Well, yeah,” Hilteeth mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “I guess I’m not great at being offensive.”

“And let me guess,” I went on, “you thought it’d be lame to drag out a match against a kid. So you rushed, blew your usual wait-and-see strategy, and got burned by a counterattack. That’s what makes you the dumbass this time.”

Hilteeth winced and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Having a preferred fighting style was fine, but having only one style was no good. Adventurers had to deal with anything jobs and quests threw at them—big, small, fast, heavy, offensive, defensive—so knowing how to fight in a balanced way was much more useful. Waiting for your opponent to screw up didn’t work on strong enemies anyway.

“Well, I get it. You guys have been adventurers for, what, six months now? You didn’t wanna lose to a kid, ’cause that would sting like hell, but you thought going all out would look bad too. So you figured you had to win easily and keep your pride intact.”

Nigu and Hilteeth grinned and relaxed a bit. Yeah, they were only pretending to act confident. They’d put on a show and tried to look cool because they were fighting a kid, and both of them had almost taken a hit because they’d underestimated him. These two might’ve fooled the kid, but they were dumbasses and morons if they thought they could trick my eyes in a fight.

“Wipe those grins off your faces! On the battlefield, it’s always idiots like you who die first, you worthless trash!” That made them straighten up, but I was too pissed off to stop yelling. “Nigu! Hilteeth! You two took that goblin extermination job, so why the hell aren’t you Rank E yet?!”

“Uh, w-well, someone stole our kills,” said Nigu, looking away.

“Tell the truth, damn it!” I snapped.

“W-We spent the whole day wandering around the mountain with no real leads,” Hilteeth confessed. He wouldn’t look at me either. “While we did that, a party passing through took out the goblins near the village.”

I’d already heard this story, and hearing it again didn’t make me any less annoyed. Calling what happened “stealing” made me wanna smack both of them.

“That,” I growled, “wasn’t stealing. You were about to fail the job, and someone else saved your asses. For all you know, they might’ve saved your damn lives. Underestimate your enemy, and even a weak one can take you down. After almost losing to that kid tonight, you really think you can beat goblins? You gonna start screaming, ‘We would’ve been stronger if we were serious about it!’ after you’re dead? Good luck finding anyone who’ll listen to that crap.”

Nigu’s and Hilteeth’s expressions sank lower and lower. They were even starting to look a little sick.

Good. Looks like the lecture’s landing. Believe it or not, I’m being nice here. I made sure the kid was out of earshot beforehand.

“Listen up, you two are warriors. You can’t use magic. You’re not scouts or trackers. You’re not that smart, and you can’t charm clients or sweet-talk your way through a job. All you’re good for is getting out there and fighting head-on. So what the hell are warriors like you doing holding back in combat?!”

“B-But aren’t you like that too?”

“Yeah, you just described yourself.”

“I’ve got guts, though. And I’m less of an asshole compared to you two.”

These two rookie punks had been hanging around the guild for six months. They whined every day, but they were also killing rats and getting experience. I’d thought maybe they were finally starting to get somewhere, but their attitudes were their biggest flaws. That was obvious now. No wonder they couldn’t find any other party members.

“So what did you want, again?” I cracked my neck. “Training, right? Perfect. This is a damn good opportunity for me to beat your attitudes into shape.”

“Uh, nah, I think we’re good for today.”

“Yeah, and you can’t beat an attitude.”

“I’ll listen to your complaints after you’re coughing up blood.” I grabbed a stick around the same length as a sword and got ready. No need to go easy on these two.

***

By the time I got back to the stable, Mercetino was fast asleep like always. I glanced at him and kept going without saying anything. I’d rinsed my face off with lots of water, so my eyes didn’t hurt anymore, but I kept my hands over them anyway. With my eyes barely open, I moved even slower than usual and made my way to the last stall.

There, I took off my browplate and armor before lying down on my bed of straw. I breathed in and out, over and over, as I thought about those two matches. Power and fighting spirit. Words and trickery. Those phrases kept repeating in my head, again and again.

“I could’ve won.” My voice trembled as those words slipped out.

Nigu and Hilteeth had completely underestimated me, so they hadn’t fought seriously. Because of that, they’d left openings, and—

“I could’ve won.”

If I’d made a move instead of flinching—

If I’d noticed what was off about his left hand—

“I could’ve won. But...”

“Just kidding,” the first one had said, and he’d knocked my stick aside. He’d yelled, he’d attacked wildly, and he’d acted like he was about to charge in before stopping to mock my counterattack.

“Just kidding,” the other one had said, and he’d flung sand in my face. His greeting and that strange gesture had been tricks to distract me from his left hand. He’d used false words and fake feelings to shake me.

Both of them had made a fool out of me.

“Damn it.”

They could’ve won without fighting dirty, but they were nasty people. The more I thought about it, the more my chest felt like it was burning and boiling over. But what hurt the most was losing to them when I could’ve won.

I just wanted to fall asleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. The more I replayed what had happened tonight in my head, the later the night grew.

***

An adventurer should only carry the essentials, but it was still hard to choose what to take with me. Things like clothing were especially hard to narrow down. I wasn’t leaving town, at least, so I could come back and grab something later if I really needed to.

As I packed, I double-checked what I absolutely needed. My spellbooks were nonnegotiable for my studies, and I needed to bring sturdy clothes that were easy to move in—winter clothes could wait. My favorite doll, the scented oil I got for my birthday, and the little musical instrument I played for fun... Unfortunately, I would have to leave those behind. I debated over my hand mirror and comb and ended up putting them in my bag.

We still hadn’t decided whether we were really moving yet. Today’s earnings were decent, but the whole day was full of lessons learned the hard way. There was no way I could claim we had everything under control. Even so, preparation was necessary. So I began separating what I needed and what I didn’t.

With every item I removed from my luggage, I felt like all the scattered parts of me were slowly being sharpened and honed—as if shedding the excess made me more focused. Every item I wanted to bring felt like a piece of who I was, and choosing what to keep was like deciding who I wanted to be.

“If I were living out of a stable with nothing but the clothes on my back, I probably wouldn’t even have this kind of moment.”

As I folded a decorative cloth and tucked it away on a shelf, I pictured my party members’ faces. Kiri had far too little to call his own, even for an adventurer. Aside from his weapon, armor, and basket for herb gathering, he could probably carry everything else he owned under one arm. That was far less than the bare essentials.

“There’s no way that’s okay,” I said out loud.

He hadn’t made the choice to part with unnecessary belongings. He’d simply never owned enough to have anything like that. My luggage, in comparison, was overflowing with excess.

I pulled out a small pouch from the depths of my bag and put it back in without even checking its contents. I already knew it held a handful of coins—my share of the reward from the goblin extermination.

“I’m going to be an adventurer,” I murmured. Those words were like a vow.

Today had been nothing but a string of regrets. We’d thought it was just a survey job, but then we’d ended up with guard duty on top of that. The client was a troublesome person who’d tried to lead by getting ahead of himself. Recognizing my own actions had been embarrassing, even before Kiri and Yune had teased me about it.

But my magia had worked. It had led us straight to what we’d needed to find.

From now on, I’ll reflect as much as I need to, figure out when I should be careful, and learn how I can improve. I’ll try to understand what kinds of requests don’t suit us, recognize the ones that do, and get the job done better next time. I’ll do what it takes for him to rely on me more, so I can hold my head high and say, “I’m his comrade.”

Chapter 3: A Ruin, a Map, and Cheap Pride

“Greetings, Kiriand! Isn’t it a wonderful morning?”

Back in my village, my mornings had always started with fetching water—an important job my older siblings had counted on me to do every day. Because of that, I’d gotten used to waking up as soon as the sky got bright.

But I overslept a little today. My head felt foggy even after waking up, and the sunlight made it hard to open my eyes. Everything about yesterday was just so frustrating. I’d tossed and turned all night, because remembering what had happened with the brick shop guy had made me think I was too weak to earn anyone’s trust. When I’d finally fallen asleep, my matches with Nigu and Hilteeth had taken over my dreams.

So I was sleep-deprived and my brain wasn’t working, but it was time to start my day. I sluggishly put on my leather armor and walked out of my stall. In the next stall over, a cheerful and sweaty young man with bright green hair seemed to sparkle in the morning sun as he worked on his horse’s bedding.

“G-Good morning, Peridot. Uh, are you cleaning the stall?”

“Mm-hmm. I left Mercetino’s care to others while I was away on long-term jobs. Now that I’m back, I just had to go all in!”

The stall did look clean. Maybe Peridot had been working for a while already, since he was so sweaty. He wiped his forehead with a cloth, and his breezy, radiant smile was almost too bright to look at.

I hesitated before I said, “Um, thank you for your advice the other day.”

“Hmm? What advice was that again?” Peridot asked.

Is he pretending, or did he actually forget? With him, I feel like it can go either way.

“You said, ‘Make the party shine,’” I reminded him.

There was a lot we still needed to reflect on and learn from the job we did for the brick shop guy, but we had completed it and gotten paid thanks to that piece of advice.

“Ah, don’t mention it,” said Peridot. “I’m sure you would’ve figured it out on your own soon enough. More importantly, did I wake you? I tried to work quietly, but...”

“Oh, uh, thank you for asking. No, I just wake up when the sun comes up. It’s kind of a habit.”

“That’s a good thing. A regular routine builds a healthy body, after all.” Peridot smiled, and his perfect white teeth gleamed.

Something about him felt different. Maybe it was because he was being so considerate, or maybe it was the sight of him sweating while working in the stable. Right now, he was nothing like the knight in shining armor I always pictured him as. But, for some reason, I didn’t feel like this version of him clashed with his image. He just seemed so natural like this.

“But you do look very sleepy. Didn’t get enough rest?” Peridot tilted his head. “Proper sleep is essential for building the body, especially at your age.”

“I, uh, lost a couple of matches yesterday...” I mumbled.

“Oh? Did you get hurt?”

“No, I just... I was so frustrated I couldn’t sleep.”

The more I talked, the more embarrassed I felt. Nigu and Hilteeth are both older and bigger than me. They’ve been adventurers longer too. Losing to them shouldn’t be surprising no matter how it happened. But I was still upset enough to lose sleep, and that feels arrogant, somehow...

“Ah, I see,” said Peridot.

“Uh...” I wasn’t sure how to react to that.

“That’s perfectly normal. I remember not sleeping on nights I lost too.” Peridot folded his arms and nodded with a nostalgic expression on his face. “Ah, it brings back memories. There were plenty of times I soaked my pillow with tears, you know.”

Peridot had said that like he was stating a simple truth. He didn’t tease me or talk down to me even though I was the smallest, weakest, and least experienced warrior in this whole guild. He understood and accepted me as I was, without a second thought.

Hmm, there’s something about the way he said “it brings back memories”... Has it really been that long since he’s lost a fight? Does that mean he really is the leader of a top-ranked party?

“So if losing upsets you this much, Kiriand, what will you do?” Peridot asked smoothly.

It took me a moment to process what he meant, but my answer slipped out just as easily as he’d asked.

“Next time, I’ll win,” I replied. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel embarrassed at all this time.

***

On a wide stretch of land overgrown with weeds stood a large mansion surrounded by cracked stone walls with a rusted iron gate. The stained and weathered mansion was so run-down and neglected, it was more like a ruin than a building. With woodland all around, the lone structure gave off an eerie, unnatural feel.

Liluetta stood in front of the ruins with her shoulders back and her arms across her chest. She looked fired up. “Today, we have a proper survey job. The newly discovered sewer extension runs directly beneath us, which means this entire zone is slated for development. So the owner of this property has decided to sell it.”

On a map, this area was just north-northwest of town. It was quiet, with fields of wheat and random trees spread out across the open landscape dotted with only a few single-story buildings—and this ruined estate.

“However, there is a problem. This mansion is the subject of persistent, spooky rumors among the locals. Things like ‘even though no one lives there, you can hear voices at night’ and ‘you can see something moving through the gaps in the boarded-up windows’ and ‘a kid who snuck in saw a blurry white shape and ran away crying.’ That kind of nonsense.” Liluetta gave a dismissive snort. “Probably just rumors. Still, there’s a chance a vagrant might have taken up residence. Or a monster might have wandered in. And this is the main part of the rumor: There might actually be an undead monster here. A ghost.”

Caw, caw, caw! Harsh cries echoed across the sky as a flock of large black birds burst forth, the noise of their beating wings like thunder in the air. The sky was thick with gray clouds overhead. Though it was still morning, the light was dim and there was an unpleasantly heavy feeling like rain was about to fall.

“Well, I believe it’s nothing serious,” Liluetta concluded. “After all, no one has been harmed. But with rumors like that floating around, no one’s going to buy land here no matter how prime the location. So the landowner put out a request. They want adventurers to check and confirm there’s nothing here.”

That was our job today: to chase rumors (that probably weren’t true) by poking around an abandoned ruin and confirming that nothing was there. Yeah. Really meaningful work.

“Can we skip this one?” I asked. “Like, maybe cancel?”

Liluetta smiled. Her cheek was twitching ever so slightly. Yune laughed a little, but she sounded uncomfortable.

“Hey, Kiri,” Liluetta said sweetly, “we did talk to you before we accepted this job this morning, remember? We asked what you thought about taking it, and you said we could decide. You do remember that, don’t you?”

“And if I’m not mistaken,” Yune added, “we also talked about this specific job yesterday evening. It was one of the options we were choosing between, riiight?”

“Yeah, well, that’s true.” I groaned and clutched my head.

They were both right, and Liluetta had explained the job all over again just now because of me. It wasn’t like I’d misunderstood what we needed to do or anything—yesterday, we’d already decided this was a beginner-friendly request we could handle. But I didn’t actually want to take it. I’d kept my mouth shut during our discussion, though, because I’d thought telling them I didn’t like the job would sound kind of pathetic.

So I’d figured I would just suggest a different job in the morning, but the problem was that I’d barely slept last night. Even Peridot had mentioned how sleepy I looked, and my head stayed foggy all morning. Eating breakfast had made me even sleepier, so I’d ended up letting Liluetta and Yune decide which job to take.

That was how we took the one job I didn’t want to do. It hadn’t really hit me until we’d arrived, and then Liluetta had noticed my reaction and probably thought I didn’t understand the request. So she’d explained the job all over again with a sigh and a look that said, Really?

All of this is Nigu and Hilteeth’s fault, I thought.

“Ghosts don’t die even if you kill them,” I muttered. “Isn’t that scary?”

“I’m more terrified by your standards.” Liluetta made a face and leaned away from me.

The undead, like ghosts and specters, were one of the rare exceptions to Waine’s go-to line: “If you kill it, it dies.” They were already dead, so killing them didn’t do anything. They just kept moving, which I thought was terrifying.

“It’s okay, Kiri-o, there’s nothing to be afraid of!” Yune beamed. “Because I can use sacred magic! Really powerful undead are a little much for me, but I can purify low-level ghosts or zombies in one hit!”

“Sacred magic?” I asked. It seemed like there were different types or categories of magic. I’d never even heard of the sacred kind.

“Yes, yes. Sacred magic is used to purge evil. It’s only learned by those who’ve received healing magic through faith and undergone special training! Hee hee. I started studying it back when the young lady here first said she wanted to become an adventurer.”

So only really special healers get to use it? Wow. I had no idea Yune could do anything like that. I really don’t know anything about my party members...

“Well, I can only use the easiest version of the spell. And, um, it fails like one out of every three times. Also, I’ve never used it in real combat. Buuut I’m sure it’ll be fine! Just leave it to me!”

None of that was reassuring, and I definitely didn’t want to leave it to her. But Yune did seem extra motivated. She was full of energy in a clumsy sort of way. Liluetta had been in charge yesterday, so maybe Yune felt like it was her turn today.

“Just to go over things again,” Liluetta cut in, “this request is a survey only. If we find anything dangerous, we are not required to eliminate it. All we have to do is identify what it is, then retreat and report it to the client. That completes the job.”

“So even if we do beat something, the reward doesn’t change, right?” I asked.

“Correct. The request is just for sending in rookies to check the place out. That’s why we’re here. If there’s nothing, great. If there is a monster or undead being, they’ll post a higher-ranked extermination request based on the threat level.”

“The guild can’t pay us a full extermination fee if they don’t even know if there is an enemy yet,” Yune added.

So, basically, we’re not supposed to fight. And since we’re still in town, we didn’t run into any monsters on our way here, and we won’t run into any on our way back to the guild. I guess this is a safe job... But going into a building that might have ghosts in it? No thanks. Why did I agree to this?

“All right, enough talking out here. We’re going in.” Liluetta pushed on the rusted iron gate, which had been left to the wind and rain for years, and it opened with a long, eerie creeeeeak.

Beyond the gate stretched a crumbling path made of broken stone bricks with weeds pushing through the cracks. That alone made the place look extra creepy, and the huge distance from the gate to the front door emphasized just how massive this estate was.

Liluetta and Yune started down the path like nothing was wrong, so I swallowed hard and hurried after them. We’d already accepted the job. If we backed out now without a good reason, we would have to pay a penalty fee. Not going in was not an option, but my legs still trembled.

We reached the front door, and I reluctantly stepped forward. Being a warrior meant being in front, which meant I had to go in first...or so I thought.

“Kiri-o, I’ll open the door, okay?” Yune gently put her hand on my shoulder before moving in front of me. “Spears are hard to use one-handed, right? If something jumps out when I open the door, you need to be in a good position to react with both of your hands on your weapon.”

“Oh. I see...” I’d thought she was just trying to protect me because I looked scared, but she had a good reason after all.

“Hee hee. I prepared for this job by learning more about adventuring.”

That’s good, but your mace isn’t a one-handed weapon either. Are you not gonna use it?

“Okay. I’m opening it now.” Yune grabbed the doorknob and pulled. The lock seemed to be broken, because the door opened with a low groan. This house was definitely going to need repairs.

It was pitch-black inside. The windows had all been boarded up, so no sunlight came through. I couldn’t really see past the area right by the doorway.

“Just like the job listing said,” Liluetta noted. “‘The front door will open because the lock is broken.’ That part checks out. So we’ve confirmed we can enter, but should we look at the yard first? I think it makes sense to circle the property once before heading inside.”

“Agreed,” Yune said. “Let’s take a walk around.”

Scouting the outside was a good call. It wouldn’t help us figure out what was inside because the windows had been boarded up, but this was a big yard and monsters could be lurking. Even though we were in town, they could fly over the walls or climb them. They could even drift down the river that runs through town or crawl up from the sea. Abandoned places like this could easily become monster nests.

Yeah, checking the yard first definitely makes sense. But one thing’s bothering me...

I pointed at the front entrance. “Are those footprints?”

“Huh?” Liluetta and Yune both turned toward me.

Inside the mansion, on the floor damaged by years of neglect, were footprints pressed into the thick layer of dust that had settled over time. A lot of them.

***

Our footsteps echoed through the hall. The bare brick floor was cold, hard, and unwelcoming beneath our boots. The warm orange light from the tip of Liluetta’s wand was casting a gentle, hazy glow in the dark interior. Seeing cobwebs on the ceiling and dust drifting through the air wasn’t very nice, but that soft light made the place a little less scary.

“The iron gate and the front door lock were both broken,” Liluetta said quietly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some vagrant who can’t afford an inn living here.”

“We might run into someone really scary,” Yune whispered.

Their voices echoed faintly through the musty corridor. Both of them were vigilant and careful. They kept their eyes moving as they walked, and I could tell they were taking this seriously. That was good—far better than letting their guards down. But...

“Uh, why are both of you holding on to me?” I asked. I was the vanguard, but it was really hard to walk with death grips on both of my shoulders. That also made it tricky to hold my spear right.

“Well, ghosts are just lingering spirits held in place by mana,” Liluetta said with her hand clamped on my shoulder. “If you disrupt their magical energy, they disperse. With the right spells, they’re actually easier to deal with than goblins. But people are different.”

“Sacred magic doesn’t work on humans at all,” Yune added from my other side.

“You two seemed a lot more confident a minute ago,” I muttered.

We continued down the dark corridor. Though the dust was thick, the footprints we were following were faint. Sometimes the prints would start veering in one direction or another, but they still seemed to trail forward. That made them easy to track, at least.

“Human footprints, huh...” It was hard to say if these were human prints for sure. But since I couldn’t see individual toes, I knew we weren’t tracking anyone or anything going barefoot. Some humanoid monsters wore shoes, apparently, but an actual human leaving shoe prints here seemed a lot more likely.

If that’s the case, what do we do when we find them? I walked in silence, turning the possibilities over in my head. We should start by asking some questions. Who are you? Why are you here? We’re adventurers hired to investigate the rumors. This land is about to be sold, so we’d like you to leave.

Most of that was like making small talk, but the last part would be hard to say. If the person was aggressive, and if they didn’t like the way I said or worded that, we could have a fight on our hands.

If it does come to that... If I have to fight someone...

My thoughts drifted back to my matches with Nigu and Hilteeth. Even though they underestimated me and got sloppy, they’re both stronger than me. I still think I could’ve won... If I’d done this or that differently, I could’ve landed a hit. But in a real fight, there’s no room for “could’ve.” No second chances.

“If we end up having to fight a person,” I said softly to the two girls gripping my shoulders, “let’s run away.”

Their replies came quickly and clearly.

“Agreed. No objections,” Liluetta said.

“It is just a survey request, after all,” Yune added.

So we were all on the same page. That was a relief.

“This door’s open too,” Liluetta noted.

We moved from room to room, opening doors and checking inside. The trail of footprints led down a long hallway that branched off to the right of the entrance hall. Some of the doors along that corridor were wide open, some were cracked slightly, and some were closed. None of them were locked.

We were in front of a door that was slightly open. The hinges groaned as I pushed the door, which was getting pretty old by now. I also noticed Yune hadn’t opened a single door since the first one. She was probably spooked by those footprints and ended up forgetting what she’d said to me.

“Nothing here,” Liluetta reported. She held up her wand light to reveal an empty room.

The person who used to live here had probably taken most of the furniture with them when they moved out. The emptiness made investigating easier for us, but the room also felt hollow and eerily bigger than it actually was.

“There aren’t any footprints leading into this room either. Not surprising,” Liluetta added.

I heard her voice right next to me. When I turned to look, her cherry-red hair brushed against my cheek. Her face was way closer to mine than I’d expected, and it caught me off guard.

“Well, we have to check every room,” Yune chimed in. “It’s part of the job.” She was the oldest and the tallest out of the three of us, so she leaned over me to peek inside the room.

“I’ll go ahead and try a mana-sensing spell in this area.” Liluetta walked into the room and pulled a large piece of cloth from her shoulder bag.

It was woven into a perfect square, with two circles drawn on it and tiny symbols in between—a magic circle for boosting the range and precision of a spell that senses areas of concentrated magical energy nearby.

Liluetta had already used this cloth in the entrance hall. She’d prepared it yesterday to avoid having to draw the circle over and over again. In other words, she’d already decided to take this survey job before we’d all agreed to it today.

“What’s the difference between sensing and detection?” I asked.

“Detection spells have a wider range,” Liluetta replied, “but they only give you a vague direction for a specific target. Mana sensing sharpens the caster’s perception to give much more detail, but the range is smaller.”

Earlier, she’d mentioned that the undead and magical energy went hand in hand. If this place really had a ghost, zombie, or specter, we would know thanks to mana sensing. That made staying alert much easier. Magic really was amazing and useful for adventurers.

Liluetta tucked her glowing wand under her arm and held the cloth in her hands, but she hesitated. My guess was that she really didn’t want to put it down on such a dusty floor. She’d made a face about the grime in the entrance hall too.

She sighed and spread the cloth out on the floor. Thanks to the orange glow of her wand, I could see the sad expression on her face. At times like this, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe adventuring really wasn’t for her, but then Liluetta seemed to pull herself together. She raised her wand and began chanting the spell.

“I’m not sensing anything,” she said after a moment. “Even the faintest trace of a ghostly presence should register.”

“So there’s nothing here?” Yune asked.

“This is a big house. It’s too early to say for sure. Let’s not drop our guard.” Liluetta picked up the cloth and carefully dusted it off with a frown on her face the whole time. Then, with the same sad look she’d had earlier, she tucked the cloth back into her shoulder bag.

She must really like that bag...

We continued while staying alert for ghosts and whoever had left those prints. Our footsteps echoed as we walked back into the corridor and headed for the next door. A thought popped into my head, and it was so creepy that I said it out loud before I could stop myself.

“You think the ghost and the person who left the footprints might be, you know, together?”

“That,” Liluetta replied, “would mean a ghost is possessing someone. Yune will take the lead when they attack us.”

“Huh?!” Yune yelped. “Well, as long as you buy me enough time for the chant...”

“Sacred magic can deal with that kind of thing too?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s a miracle that purifies only what’s evil,” Yune explained.

Buying her time, huh... If a person possessed by a ghost attacks us, would they even be scared of a spear? What if I try to scare them off and it doesn’t work?

“Maybe I could aim for their legs with my spear so they can’t keep moving?” I thought out loud. “I really don’t want to, though.”

“Right. We could try Yune’s sacred magic if the situation calls for it, but we should really retreat,” Liluetta suggested. “I’m not confident we could extract a ghost without hurting the possessed person.”

“But if a ghost stays inside someone for too long, their minds can start to merge. That’s dangerous. In a case like that, I think we should try to help no matter what.” Yune looked really anxious about the possibility, but she also didn’t want to retreat.

If there was someone Yune could save, she wanted to do it. This was a job, though, and we wouldn’t get paid for doing anything other than a survey. Taking unnecessary risks was not a good idea. But...

“Just once.” I tightened my grip on my spear. “If it comes to that, I’ll buy you enough time to cast sacred magic once.”

“The job of a party leader is to make the party shine.” Peridot’s words came back to me. As a party, if we want to... If we feel like we should... If we can rise to the challenge... I’ll trust them, and we’ll face it head-on together. Because maybe that’s what it means to shine.

“Even if it doesn’t affect the outcome of this request, it’s not a bad idea to test whether we can handle something like that. It might help with future jobs.” Liluetta didn’t sound thrilled, but she was on board.

I wondered if she hadn’t wanted to suggest a retreat in the first place. After all, she was a responsible person who wanted to see every job through.

“U-Understood! I’ll do my best!” Yune sounded fired up now that our plan was settled.

That’s great, but can you please stop squeezing my shoulder?

In the orange glow from Liluetta’s magical light, I saw a closed door at the end of the hallway. The footprints led right up to it.

“This is it,” Liluetta murmured.

Someone gulped—it was probably Yune. So far, the footprints had just been vague impressions in the dust. But here, I could make out the shape of a shoe and tracks going in and out of this room.

Actually, the footprints were weirdly scattered near the door. I couldn’t figure out what that meant, and it was starting to make me feel uneasy.

Yune suddenly let go of my shoulder and stepped forward. “R-Right! Opening doors is my job, now that I think about it! O-Okay, here I gooo!”

Oh, now she remembers... As I watched Yune reach for the doorknob, I shoved aside the question I’d just thought of and raised my spear.

The door creaked open.

“Waaah!”

“Ahhh!”

“Eeee!”

Three completely different screams filled the hall.

Just beyond the open door, a pale figure stood motionless and silent in the glow of Liluetta’s orange light.

“A-A ghost?! Both of you, get back!” I yelled.

“You too, Kiri! Weapons don’t work on ghosts!”

“O-O-O Amana, please bless us, protect us, protect us!”

The three of us scrambled back in a panic and stumbled down the hall.

I thought my heart was going to explode. Nobody said anything about the ghost being right there!

Even after we’d made all that noise, the white figure hadn’t moved. It stood beyond the doorway, frozen in place. The ghost was extra creepy because it was so still, but at least it wasn’t trying to follow us or anything.

My spear was still at the ready, though. “Undead are supposed to attack the living, right? Why is it just standing there?”

“Maybe it can’t leave that room?” Yune guessed.

I didn’t know much about ghosts, but that sounded like something I’d read about. Maybe it had died in that room, or something in there meant a lot to it, and that was why it was bound. I think one of the priest’s books had mentioned something like that about the undead.

“No,” Liluetta said firmly. She let go of my shoulder and walked straight toward the room.

“Huh? Wait! Liluetta?! That’s dangerous!” I called out, but she didn’t stop.

I have to go after her. What is she doing? Is she possessed? Not good. I have to do something!

With a single smooth motion, Liluetta reached out toward the white figure and—

“I knew it.” She pulled an old bedsheet slightly yellow with age off a chair with a broken armrest and a broom with thin, sparse bristles leaning against the back. “A kid ran away screaming after seeing a white figure on the property. That was one of the rumors, wasn’t it? Honestly. What a pointless fuss.”

In other words, coming here was a test of courage for local kids. A place where kids played wasn’t going to be crawling with evil undead. If there had really been something dangerous here, we would’ve heard a lot more than just rumors and gossip. Still, we checked every room in the mansion and the whole yard just to be sure.

“We can’t just call it a day because it seems fine. It’s an easy job, so we should do it perfectly and report back with our heads held high,” Liluetta said.

She was absolutely right, and Yune and I felt the same. We wanted to finish the job and feel good about it. So we explored every corner and completed the survey. In the end, we confirmed there was nothing here—no people, monsters, or anything else. Well, Yune did walk into a spiderweb and almost start crying, but that was about it. The mansion had seemed pretty scary at first. But by the time we were done, the whole thing kind of felt like a letdown.

If you’re looking for something that exists, you can stop once you find it. But if you’re confirming nothing, you have to search from one end to the other. That was exactly what we had to do for this kind of job. It ended up not being dangerous at all, but it was definitely time-consuming. That was why we didn’t get back to the guild until late afternoon.

“A fake ghost made by tossin’ a sheet over a broken chair and broom, huh. Didn’t find anythin’ else?” Barque asked.

“We checked the entire estate with mana sensing and visual inspection,” Liluetta reported.

“No undead, no monsters, no people,” I said.

“Just lots of spiderwebs, really,” Yune added.

Barque wrote everything we said on a sheet of parchment. He would probably pass it along to the client later. We never met the client this time—it seemed like that was normal for some jobs.

“From what I saw,” Liluetta continued, “the building is in rough shape. But it could be livable with a bit of repair. There didn’t seem to be any major leaks. If they’re going to sell the property, the first step should be...”

“That’s for the client to decide,” Barque cut in. “The guild’s not responsible for going that far.”

Liluetta looked a little irritated at being shut down, but she just grumbled a little before going quiet. I was kind of impressed she’d checked all of that. But it wasn’t part of our job, and she wasn’t a building inspector either. Even if she’d meant well, Barque couldn’t pass that kind of info on to the client.

“Well, no complaints about the job itself. Good work.” He placed the reward on the counter, and I thanked him before accepting.

There was a line of people waiting behind us, so we stepped off to one side to divide up the reward. Liluetta had done the most work today again, but splitting the reward evenly was our party’s rule. Chikka had once said, “That’s the easiest way to go.”

“Hmph. I’ve changed my opinion a little,” said Liluetta. “The guild’s operations are surprisingly solid.”

Yune nodded. “Well, considering the adventurers they have to deal with, maybe the head of the guild has to keep a tight grip on things.”

“Okay, but maybe keep your voices down a little?” I asked.

Though the sun was still up, the guild was already noisy and the smell of alcohol was in the air. No one was paying attention to us, but it still didn’t feel right to talk about other adventurers like that...even if it was true.

“Anyway, today’s job went well.” Liluetta folded her arms. “With Kiri and me handling the exploration and Yune ready with sacred magic, I’d say the request was perfectly suited to our party’s strengths.”

“I didn’t really do anything, though,” Yune said sheepishly. “I’m feeling a bit guilty.”

“That’s not true at all,” I said. “Just knowing you can handle things if something happens makes me feel a lot safer.”

“R-Really?” Yune still looked skeptical, but I meant it.

Nothing had happened today, and Yune didn’t get her chance to shine, but we probably wouldn’t have taken that job without her in our party.

“You know,” Liluetta said, “I think this kind of survey work might suit us. If a similar request comes up, we should consider taking it.”

Yune looked at her. “But I still won’t have anything to do...”

“You never know when something might happen,” I said. “Just having you around helps me out a lot.”

Yune seemed conflicted. She didn’t do much last time or this time, but her job was to step up when someone got hurt or when there were undead around. Honestly, I would rather not be in a situation where we really need her. But I knew we could rely on her in a fight, so I definitely wanted her with us on every job. It’s kind of hard to explain, but having a healer in our party just feels really reassuring.

As we were talking, we ended up over by the requests wall. It just happened naturally because we all knew it was time to start thinking about tomorrow by checking for new jobs.

Then I spotted some familiar faces. “That’s Waine and the others.”

Waine, Chikka, and Sheya were all standing by the table closest to the requests and talking about something.

“And Peridot.”

He was at the table too, and they all looked like they were discussing something important. It was an unexpected combination, because that flashy “Bearer of the Radiant Sun” didn’t seem like he would get along with Chikka or Sheya at all.

“Oh, isn’t he that warrior from Teteni’s party?” Liluetta asked. “He knows those three?”

Apparently, Liluetta’s only impression of Peridot was that he was part of the rabbit beastfolk Teteni’s group. She didn’t seem to be around. I’d heard she didn’t like being around a lot of people, so maybe she didn’t come to the guild often.

“Peridot was talking with Waine the other day,” I offered.

“Hmm? Then maybe it’s a job discussion,” said Liluetta. “Some requests do call for multiple parties to work together.”

The highest-ranked party in the guild teaming up with Waine, Sheya, and Chikka sounded like a huge deal. Just thinking about it made me curious, but the four of them looked unusually serious. I wasn’t even sure if I should go and say hello.

Since they were standing so close to the requests, though, I couldn’t really avoid them. And since no one was whispering, we could hear their conversation without even trying.

“This is such a pain. Only sticking to safe routes is ridiculous. Why don’t we just go straight through?” Waine complained.

“The search range is too broad,” Chikka added. “We can get to a lot of places by following main roads, which are pretty safe, but we still have to take annoying routes full of obstacles and narrow paths.”

“I hate that they’re growing in danger zones,” Sheya said. “According to my detection spell.”

From the tone of their voices, it was clear they were having a tough time.

“It’s tricky,” Peridot admitted. “Old Badger gave Kiriand some advice about it, didn’t he? So I assumed it would be somewhere a child could reach.”

Chikka rubbed her temple. “That was probably just something gramps said on the spot. He just wanted to bail out fast and said the first thing he could think of.”

The four of them were looking at a big map spread out on their table as they talked.

Wait. They just said...

“Um, are you talking about Old Badger?” The question just slipped out. I’d thought I shouldn’t butt in when they were having such a serious conversation, but curiosity won after I heard who they’d mentioned.

Chikka was the first to turn around. “Hey, tiny. Did Old Badger ever tell you where to find nacturus?”

I nodded. “He did, yeah.”

All four of them looked completely stunned.

I did talk about nacturus when Peridot bought me dinner. Maybe they need some right now, even though it’s not in season yet.

I leaned over the table and pointed to a spot on the map northwest of the Forest of Bedge. “Here.”

“There?!” Chikka squawked. “You’d have to go through the forest to get there!”

That’s not a problem for the four of you, though.

“The road northeast kind of cuts off here on the map,” I explained, “but there’s supposed to be an abandoned village past that point. I heard the old road still exists. It’s a safer route for reaching this area.”

“You serious?” Waine muttered.

My explanation made Waine, Chikka, and Sheya clutch their heads.

“We walked two whole days for nothing...” Waine groaned.

“We never would’ve found that on our own,” Chikka added.

“Should’ve asked you first,” Sheya muttered.

All I did was answer a question, but now I kind of felt bad about it. They’d been so focused and serious that I’d thought they were planning something huge, but they were just stuck trying to find some herbs. That was kind of disappointing, but it also made perfect sense with these three involved.

Everything seems to be a letdown today. I’m glad I helped them, at least.

“Well, I should get going. See you later for training, Waine.” I waved and walked away from the table. My own party was waiting for me, and Liluetta might be a little mad at me for jumping into another party’s business all of a sudden.

Better head back quick. We still need to figure out which request to take tomorrow.

“Wait a moment, Kiriand.”

Peridot’s voice stopped me in my tracks.

***

“Wait a moment, Kiriand.”

Only after I called out did I start to wonder why I had. There was no more information to be gained from him, and it wasn’t as if I doubted what he’d told us. I had no reason to stop him, so I suspected I’d simply wanted to.

I took a moment to study him. He was young, yes, but his childlike qualities were more striking. He probably wasn’t even twelve years old—old enough to register as an adventurer—yet, and he looked like an ordinary child you might find anywhere. That did make him stand out in an adventurer’s guild but merely in a way that seemed out of place rather than special.

Hmm. Isn’t he the one who escaped slavery and became an adventurer? That kind of thing does happen, I suppose.

“What is it, Peridot?” He turned to face me without hesitation. The look on his face was so innocent, so unguarded, that I finally understood why I had called out to him.

Because this doesn’t make sense.

“Nacturus is the second most valuable herb on the guild’s permanent collection list, isn’t it? That should be a precious source of income for someone who sleeps in a stable. Why would you give that information away so freely?”

Things that don’t make sense bother me.

Granted, I didn’t particularly care when other people did absurd things. Not understanding them wasn’t a problem because they had nothing to do with me. There was no point getting involved with every little thing other people did, especially if we were in the same line of work.

Adventurers lived freely, after all. Why should I be concerned about what others did? Apparently, people liked to whisper about me being some kind of eccentric or weirdo, but my only reaction to that was something like Oh, is that so? What a pointless thing to talk about.

Adventurers were free to behave however they liked. I couldn’t even begin to understand why anyone would go out of their way to fit neatly inside someone else’s frame of mind. We were all misfits who chose not to keep our feet on the ground. If anything, we ought to be like Old Badger and laugh off judgmental opinions as if to say, Screw what anyone else thinks.

The adventurers who called me a weirdo or a freak were just trying to reassure themselves—to tell themselves they were normal by comparison. What an utterly baffling and senseless mindset with no value to me whatsoever. That kind of useless, cynical thinking was always something I’d discarded. But as I stood before this boy, I found myself wondering if he might be a fellow eccentric.

Who would ever predict that someone so weak, poor, and small would just give away a valuable income source like that without asking for a single thing in return?

No one, that’s who. That’s exactly why I didn’t ask him about nacturus before. I assumed he wouldn’t want to tell me if he knew. I don’t understand what he did. It makes no sense, it bothers me, and I can’t just ignore it. It breaks my sense of internal consistency, so it must be resolved.

“Aren’t you worried we’ll pick a valuable herb like that clean?”

Tell me. Why did you offer me charity?

This small, pitiful child who had escaped from a slave trader—this fresh-faced rookie who lived in a stable tilted his head slightly as if to say he was confused why my question even mattered.

“Well, you looked like you were in trouble,” he told me.

I understood now. I nodded to accept his answer and sighed to myself. He’d won, and I’d lost.

“Helping someone in need, huh? A flawless principle.” Genuine admiration welled up in my chest. I placed my right hand over my heart and bowed.

An act of kindness from someone with wealth or privilege was generally done on a whim. Kindness from one without may be for a calculated benefit; they might even be willing to endure some loss to achieve it. For a priest, good deeds were part of their mission. But this boy was doing none of those things.

“Thank you, Kiriand. The information you gave us was a great help. You have my deepest respect and gratitude.”

“Uh, you don’t have to be all formal like that. It’s kind of awkward.”

“Hmph. Doesn’t matter how you feel about it. I wanted to thank you, so I did. Ah, don’t worry about us picking all the nacturus. That was unkind of me to say. We won’t be picking any—we just want to retrace Old Badger’s footsteps. He was a true legend of this guild, and we’re doing this to honor his memory.”

“Wait, really?” The boy’s eyes went wide.

His eyes lit up. So Old Badger really is important to him. But if he gets too interested and says he wants to come along, that would be a problem. Better get ahead of that.

“Yes. It’s still a bit early in the season for nacturus, so we’re just going to check on it. If it looks like it’s almost ready to harvest, I’ll be sure to let you know. So you can focus on your own work without having to worry. Look, your adorable party members are waiting for you.”

“Oh, okay. Got it. Thank you, Peridot!” He bowed politely, then hurried back to his group.

As I watched him retreat into the crowd, I felt my expression soften. Then I heard a loud voice ruin the moment.

“You’re acting creepy, Peri-dork. Showing actual emotion? At this rate, it’s gonna rain spears tomorrow.”

“Burdio, you’re as rude as ever. Why not take a lesson from young Kiriand?”

“It’s Waine, damn it.”

I shrugged. People seemed to think I had no interest in others, but that was untrue. The fact was, very few people made me want to remember their names.

In that sense, our encounter today may have been a blessing.

“Kiriand has good and beautiful eyes. They might be the eyes of someone destined to become a hero one day.”

***

I hadn’t eaten dinner yet. After yesterday’s mistake, I’d decided meals would come after training. I tested the feel of the wooden practice stick in my hands. I’d been swinging it every day, and it was starting to feel more and more familiar—almost like an extension of my arm. Then I let a slow breath out and took a deep one in. The village priest had once told me the best way to take a deep breath was to exhale all the way first.

The sound of feet made me look up. Nigu was stomping like he was packing dirt into the ground with each step. Maybe that had some sort of meaning, or maybe he was just getting himself fired up.

There’s still so much I don’t know. After fighting Nigu and Hilteeth, I’d replayed those fights in my head over and over. That same truth had hit me each time. What I did know was this: Since I was a kid, they treated me like one and looked down on me. Of course they did. They were stronger than me, and I was weak.

I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath before taking a shallow one. Then I opened my eyes again and stared straight ahead at my opponent. Yes, I was weak. During both of the requests I’d done with Liluetta and Yune, the ones that weren’t about herb picking, I’d felt my own weakness deeply. Yesterday, the brick shop guy had been worried about us because I didn’t look strong enough. Today, I couldn’t even say for sure if I would be able to buy Yune time to chant a single spell.

Things can’t stay like this. I have to get stronger.

“I’m lucky,” I muttered.

It was so perfect, I wanted to laugh. I felt like someone was serving me a feast on a silver platter—I needed to get stronger, I had an opponent I wanted to defeat, and here I was tonight with a beautiful moon overhead and a chance to fight him again.

“All right, kiddo. And Nigu. Go.”

We got a proper signal this time. Waine probably just randomly decided to call one out. I held my stick at the ready and took my stance.

It was time for our rematch.

I’d gone over this fight again and again. I’d really thought it through. Nigu’s attacks were all big swings. His fighting style was about shouting to rattle his opponent before locking them down with heavy blows. It was crude and simple but surprisingly effective. Hearing an angry scream in the middle of a fight made you tense, and dealing with huge attacks made you anticipate pain. That was enough to mess with your reactions.

The force of one of his attacks was enough to knock me out of my stance. Getting caught in his rhythm meant dealing with a nonstop assault without the chance to get myself ready again. That made Nigu’s style such a pain to deal with, but I was ready this time. I wasn’t going to play his game.

“I’m coming, runt! Yaaaah!” Nigu, with his dark, bulging eyes, yelled and charged at me from far away when Waine was still giving the start signal.

He raised his stick up high. That was just like him—no stance, straight into an attack from overhead. A big move like that took time to prepare. I knew what he was doing this time. To me, that windup turned into an opening.

I timed my breathing and movements with his: I planted my back foot, twisted my hips, rotated my shoulders, kept my elbows tucked in, then put all of my speed into a forward strike. I didn’t need power. All I did was send my stick on the fastest and shortest path to my opponent without letting that yell shake me.

“Ugh!” Nigu’s eyes went even wider with shock.

I felt a clean, solid thwack on impact, but something was off. This wasn’t like yesterday. This wasn’t what I remembered or what I’d planned for. Nigu’s windup had been way bigger and higher last time, when all he’d cared about was offense, not defense. Right now, he was still holding his stick up in the air aggressively, but...

He blocked my thrust with the part of the stick that was between his hands. If we’d been fighting with swords, that would’ve been like blocking with the hilt—a last-second defense that probably looked like sheer luck to someone watching from the sidelines. That was how close it’d been. I clenched my teeth. If I’d been just a little faster, I could’ve hit him. I could’ve won, but my setup had failed.

“Not done yet!!!” My voice exploded from deep inside me, and I lunged forward with everything I had.

My setup had failed, but I’d forced Nigu to block. He’d barely yanked his stick back in time, so he didn’t have the stance or balance to counter right. I followed up with a horizontal strike to press him.

“Tch!” Nigu only just managed to block with the same part of his stick again, but this time he stepped back.

I dragged my stick along his and used that motion to launch another thrust. I aimed straight for his gut, and he dodged it with a jump to the side.

That was fine. I wasn’t going to bank everything on one strike. I would attack five or ten or however many more times just to hit him once. I stepped in close, raised my stick above my shoulder, and swung down in a diagonal slash.

Thud! Thump! I heard a foot stomp and felt something hit me hard as I fell. The ground hit my back like a hammer and forced the air out of my chest, while the moon shone in my spinning vision. I had no idea what had happened, and I was too confused by that and the pain to even know how I was doing.

I thought I’d cornered Nigu...

“Your attacks are all choppy. They’re not chaining together.”

I looked toward the voice and saw Nigu standing over me with the starry sky behind him. That was when I finally realized he’d slammed into me with a body check and sent me flying. Then there was a light pressure on my chest—Nigu tapped me with the end of his stick.

Damn. I knew it. Even when I give it everything I’ve got, he’s still stronger than me.

Waine’s voice rang out. “Match over.”

“Next. Hilteeth.”

“All right.” Hilteeth stepped forward. His long hair was tied back again.

It seemed like I wasn’t getting a break, even though my back hurt from being slammed onto the ground.

“Let’s have a good match,” Hilteeth said with a smile.

I forced myself to get up and reply. “Yeah.”

Hilteeth was already in position, with that same sideways stance and his left hand hidden behind his body. This guy really was nasty.

“Start,” Waine called.

I raised my stick. My back still ached, but I could move and I didn’t feel like I was injured. There was no reason not to fight. Losing to Nigu did sting, and I was stuck wondering how I was supposed to pull off attacks that were “chaining together,” but I had to clear my head.

Hilteeth stood like he had yesterday, with his right hand gripping his stick and his left tucked behind his back. He leaned so far back, there was absolutely nothing that showed he was going to attack. This was going to be hard. Was he holding sand again? Why bother hiding it? He had to know I was expecting it, but maybe that was the point. Maybe he wanted to draw my attention to his left hand and make me focus on it to distract me.

I bit my lower lip. I already felt like I’d walked into a trap just by standing here. I had to be cautious because I didn’t want another handful of sand in my eyes, and it was easy to imagine him planning something worse. Now that we were training together, we’d both known a rematch was coming. Hilteeth might’ve prepared a second weapon this time, maybe a short stick or something, for a left-handed attack after blocking with his right. That kind of setup wasn’t out of the question at all, so I had to stay on guard.

“Hup!” From a distance, I aimed for his right hand with two quick strikes.

He dodged one and blocked the other like I’d expected. I leaped back to put distance between us, and Hilteeth didn’t pursue. This was the same opening as yesterday. Again, he refused to take the initiative and didn’t close the gap. He was the kind of fighter who would only go on the offensive when it was time to finish things, like a hunter putting down a trapped animal.

“Hilteeth,” I called out, just to test the waters.

“Yes?”

So he was willing to talk, though that wasn’t surprising because he liked mind games. He was probably happy to try and throw me off with conversation, but he remained in stance and wouldn’t attack me.

I very, very slowly took one hand off my stick and crouched down to pick up a rock, making sure Hilteeth could see everything I was doing.

For a moment, he didn’t seem to understand. Then, as he probably realized I’d been wide open on purpose, his eyes went sharp. “You...”

“You’re not going to say it’s unfair, are you?” I hurled the rock at his face as hard as I could. That throw was full of all the irritation I felt just from looking at him. And the rock was big enough to hurt him if it hit, which was why I’d picked it.

“Tch.” Hilteeth jerked his head aside to dodge.

I lunged forward in that instant and swung my stick, but his instincts were fast enough to help him block.

I didn’t follow up. I wanted to, but I jumped back to put some distance between us. He must’ve expected me to press him, because he froze when I backed off instead.

“You surprised me. That was a pretty childish trick,” he said.

“Was it?” I asked.

His face twisted with anger. Well, getting mad about this was his problem, not mine. He was the one who’d started this, and I was just returning the favor. I reached down to pick up another rock. When I looked up, Hilteeth’s expression had changed from anger to shock.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “If you think I’m being childish, why don’t you stop me?”

I threw the second rock and dashed forward with it. After all, wearing him down with words and making openings by throwing rocks wasn’t cheating.

“Hyaaah!”

“Damn it!”

Hilteeth dodged the stone and blocked my strike. His face was tight with frustration, but he still didn’t break his defensive stance. I jumped back to retreat just like before.

Nigu’s fighting style was simple enough to read at a glance. Hilteeth’s, on the other hand, was full of traps. He was harder to deal with, but I could figure more out by watching him. By now, even I could tell that Hilteeth specialized in defense. If I let my guard down and threw out a careless strike, he’d probably take me down in a single move like Nigu had. And I still didn’t know what was in his left hand. I had to be careful, wait for my chance, and force him to reveal whatever he was hiding.

I took a long breath in and felt cold night air filling my chest. I let it settle and gave it time to calm my heart. Then I bent down and picked up another rock. I heard Hilteeth’s jaw grinding and saw rage in his expression.

This was my strategy: to push him to the limit of his patience and force him to use his left hand. Until then, I would throw rocks again and again and again.

I would grind his spirit into dust.

***

“Listen up, you two. Whatever happens, do not lose to the kid.”

Waine had said that when we’d dragged ourselves back to the dorm and collapsed onto our mats after that brutal first day of training.

“Yeah, obviously. No way I’m losing to him,” said Nigu.

“Beating him’s a given.” I was exhausted and just wanted to crash, but I still answered.

Waine nodded. “You’re both stronger than him. Winning ten times out of ten should be easy. But flukes happen. Maybe it’s once every fifty fights, or once every hundred, but they happen.”

“Well, I guess,” Nigu mumbled and looked away.

Today was a little too close for comfort, but it would be different next time. We figured out what the kid could do, so winning should be easy next time.

“What our bro means is don’t let your guard down,” I said. “Plenty of adventurers have died losing to someone they thought was weaker.”

After only six months in the guild, we’d already seen that happen. Watching veterans with decent reputations get carried out in body bags had made our usual rat hunts feel more serious for a while. Waine was just reminding us of that.

We did underestimate that kid today because he’s, well, a kid.

But Waine shook his head. “No. That’s not it. If that kid beats you, he’ll get cocky. He’ll think he’s gotten strong, rush in on some monster, and get himself killed. When that happens, it’ll be your fault.”

Our fault?

“You don’t wanna be the reason some kid dies, do you?” Waine went on. “That’s why you can never lose. We’ll do matches every day from now on. Win every single one like your life depends on it. You should be stronger, so keep winning like it’s nothing.”

That was completely insane.

I’d probably blocked or dodged at least ten rocks by now. A follow-up attack came from a slightly different angle after each throw. I had to retreat and watch that small figure slip away again every single time.

Waine had told us to smash through every possible fluke. It was normal to win and lose during training, though. Adventurers are supposed to be responsible for themselves, but I have to worry about the cocky little brat dying too? When he’s here throwing rocks at me? What kind of twisted logic is that?

“Tch.” I dodged another rock and blocked another thrust. Then I tried to go on the offensive, but he was already out of reach.

Nigu had done well. Because he couldn’t afford to lose, he’d focused harder on defense than he had yesterday. It’d paid off—he’d blocked that sudden opening strike and beat this infuriating brat fair and square, just as he should have. That meant I absolutely couldn’t lose.

The kid crouched low to pick up another rock. From the angle of his head, I could tell he was watching my toes and waiting for me. He was bending his knees, not his waist, to make sure he could respond immediately if I made a move. He was still pointing the stick in his left hand at me like he was ready to thrust at any moment.

If I rushed in carelessly, he’d bare his fangs and spring his trap. Even so, if I attacked right now, I couldn’t imagine losing. I clearly had an edge in terms of size, skill, and experience. That kind of advantage made a difference. But attacking would lower my chances of winning, and I couldn’t ignore even the smallest possibility of a fluke. So I held back and didn’t take the bait he’d laid out.

He threw another rock, and I leaned back to dodge. He aimed for my legs, and I swept his stick aside. But that wasn’t the end this time.

The kid stepped closer and struck again. Just like Nigu had said, the transition between his first and second blows was sloppy and gave me enough breathing room while blocking to reset my stance. He jumped back, and I didn’t chase. There was no need because the pattern had changed, and he was rushing now. That proved he was getting flustered. I just had to keep doing what I was doing.

“Tiring, isn’t it?” I figured it was about time. Under the moonlight, I could see his shoulders rising and falling with every breath. “You’ve never been in an endurance match, have you? Well, here’s something to remember. Attacking wears you out way faster than defending. Even with a stick instead of a real weapon, swinging it dozens of times makes your arms stop working. And in a real fight, where you’re on edge, your stamina drains fast.”

Last time, I’d rushed in because dragging things out had felt awkward. That had almost gotten me in trouble. I let him wear himself down this time, and it was working.

“Squatting down, throwing rocks, rushing in, jumping back... You’ve got energy, kid, but you’re burning it fast. How many times did you plan to keep this up? How many more can you?”

That was my plan: drain his stamina, slow him down, then finish him off. As part of that setup, I’d kept my left hand hidden to keep him from charging at me.

That’s how you set a trap.

“Appreciate the effort, by the way, you doing all those feints. But nothing’s in my hand today.” I held my left hand up with my palm open and waved it around for him to see.

That was a lie. I’d been holding sand, but as the fight went on, I’d let it slowly slip through my fingers so he wouldn’t notice. If he thought I would let a brat like him get the last word, he really didn’t understand how this worked.

He charged at me with a cry of anger and thrust his stick like a spear, and I met his attack head-on with a perfect defensive stance.

I’m the one putting everything into this. There’s no way I’m going to lose a fight of wills.

***

Clack, clack, clack! The sound of wooden sticks clashing echoed through the air. One of the fighters was Waine, and the other was Hilteeth.

Waine had been attacking nonstop for a while now, and Hilteeth was barely keeping up and blocking each strike by the skin of his teeth. Even though defense was supposed to be his specialty, he couldn’t counter at all. In fact, every exchange pushed him back more and more.

Waine’s attacks flowed together like each movement anticipated the next, with one motion leading into another without a single pause. The most impressive part was that his center never wavered. His back stayed straight, and he didn’t sway side to side or bounce up and down at all. His advance and attack were clean and direct. He dominated the match, and the huge difference in their abilities was clear.

So that’s a real chain of attacks, I thought.

I sat cross-legged on the ground and watched, because I’d heard doing this counted as training too. Now I believed it. Seeing other people move was really educational. I’d only ever trained one-on-one with Waine, so I’d never had a chance to observe like this before. Actually, this was the first time I’d ever watched two people fight.

This is how it’s supposed to look.

“Yo, kid.” Under the pale moonlight, with his messy hair and bugged-out eyes, Nigu reminded me of a ghost. He plopped down next to me. “You even get why this is impressive? Or are you just staring?”

Not that I expected someone like him to ask for permission to sit, but I was surprised that he sat down next to me at all.

“It’s his wrists,” I said after taking some time to think about it. “Waine can stop his swings exactly where and when he wants, so he’s always ready to start his next attack right away.”

His movements never lost rhythm because there was no wasted motion. Each strike carved a clean arc through the air and stopped with precision before beginning its next trajectory. The way his weapon moved under the moonlight was almost like a beautiful performance.

Nigu clicked his tongue. “You’re so annoying, you know that?”

That meant I was probably right, but I wasn’t really happy about it. There was no way I could copy the way Waine stopped and started his swings. Wrist strength wasn’t a trick or a clever technique. It was something earned through steady training—real muscle built over time. How long would it take before I could control a weapon like that?

“What kinda job did you guys take today?”

Nigu’s question was simple and straightforward, but it took me a second to register because it had absolutely nothing to do with what was in front of us. The job we took today...

“I guess we surveyed a haunted mansion? Nothing there in the end, though.”

“What about yesterday?”

Was he making small talk? Nigu didn’t like me very much, so I never thought he would come sit next to me and start chatting like this.

“Looking for a safe place to dig clay. That was a survey job too.”

The guard duty part of that survey request had been the hard part.

“So no combat. You guys picking those kinds of jobs on purpose?”

“Yeah. Since we’ve got two magic users in the party, we’re trying to take jobs that suit our setup.”

“Well, guess that makes sense for you.” Nigu snorted through his nose. “Still pisses me off, though. It’s unfair, y’know.”

This is the second time he’s said “unfair” to me, but he sounds more serious or maybe even desperate...

“Because I have magic users in my party?”

That had to be it, because Nigu and Hilteeth had tried to recruit Liluetta. They’d probably planned to invite Yune too. Having a magic user made so many more job options available. I knew just how much of an advantage that was for adventurers now.

“That’s not it.” Nigu scowled.

Wait, really? I was sure that was the reason.

“Even if they can use magic, those two are newbies. Probably worse than you in a fight. They’ll drag you down when it matters.”

I couldn’t really argue with that—not even to defend them. We’d only been in one real battle. That goblin fight at the mana pool was our only reference point, and...

Sorry, you two. Zero combat points.

“But you guys still tried to recruit Liluetta, didn’t you?”

“Mm.” Nigu nodded.

I waited, hoping he would explain why they’d invited someone who would “drag you down.” But he just stared grumpily at the match between Waine and Hilteeth. So I started thinking it over. Nigu and Hilteeth were both warriors, so they probably focused on combat. They couldn’t use magic, and they didn’t seem like scouts either. It wouldn’t surprise me if combat requests were the only ones they could take.

Only having one specialty really limited an adventurer’s job possibilities. Those who wanted to expand by recruiting new party members normally picked people who could help them do better at what they already did. So Nigu and Hilteeth would care about how much a new party member could boost their combat ability, instead of just being glad they could use magic.

But Nigu had said Liluetta and Yune would only drag them down in a fight. So that meant he and Hilteeth must have had some other reason for trying to recruit them.

“Hmm.” I folded my arms and thought about it more.

Yune was a healer, so she could be a big help with patching you up after a fight. And I already knew Liluetta’s magic was super useful for the kinds of jobs we did yesterday and today. They were definitely assets, but that wasn’t it either. Nigu had just said it wasn’t about magic.

I’m more confused now. Why did they try to recruit Liluetta? And what’s so unfair?

“Oh.” It hit me, and I kinda got annoyed.

If that’s the reason, then there’s nothing unfair going on at all. He’s just misunderstanding the situation.

Liluetta had turned down Nigu and Hilteeth’s offer and yelled at them in front of everybody because they were trying to use the Magnan name for their own gain.

“Just so you know,” I told Nigu, “I haven’t gotten any gear from the Magnans or anything. All the jobs we’ve taken are just regular ones off the board, okay?”

“I know that, you stable rat!” Nigu snapped. He looked even more annoyed than before.

Wait, huh? What else could it be? I tried my best to come up with something but came up short.

“You wouldn’t get it.” He said that like I was too dumb to understand.

Don’t be rude when you’re the one who started talking to me...

“Then explain,” I said.

“Nah. Not gonna.”

“Then don’t say I’m being unfair. That’s rude and mean.”

“Guh.”

It was fine if he had a problem with me. If I’d rubbed him the wrong way, I would even apologize. But if he still insisted I was being unfair and refused to tell me why, then that was just him being a jerk. Now I was stuck with this big mess of irritation and unpleasant feelings in my chest.

“B-Being rude or mean doesn’t matter in a fight!”

“This isn’t a fight. We’re just talking.”

“Listen, kid. If you’re gonna be a warrior, you better get this into your head. A warrior’s supposed to be mentally prepared for battle all the time.”

“But we’re not in a battle right now. We’re just talking, and we’re not even talking about battle stuff. You’re older than me, but you can’t even have a proper conversation? The gods say you’re not supposed to say mean things to other people, but you still said I was being unfair and you won’t even explain why. You can see how that’s mean, right? You’re the one being unfair right now!”

“Why do you always gotta be such a know-it-all? It’s not cute at all!”

What are you saying? The last thing I want is for you to think I’m cute.

“The hell are you guys doing?”

A sharp voice cut in and made me turn my head. Waine had his practice stick propped on his shoulder and a fed up look on his face. Behind him, Hilteeth was soaked in sweat as he gasped for breath and clutched his chest.

I’d gotten distracted by Nigu and missed the rest of the fight, but it was obvious Waine had won easily.

“Didn’t I say watching was part of training too? Pay attention next time.”

He had said that, and watching really was helpful. I wanted to watch until the end, but now I was getting scolded because Nigu had started talking to me.

“So? What were you two talking about?” Waine asked.

I pointed at Nigu. “He said my party’s unfair.”

“Huh? Well, yeah.” Waine shrugged. “Your party’s one guy with two girls. Kinda hard not to be jealous.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Nigu yelled.

His voice was extra loud, so I was pretty sure Waine was onto something.

“Oh, I get it. Which girl do you like more?” I asked.

“Shut the hell up, brat!” Nigu snapped.

“Seriously, we should smack this kid,” said Hilteeth.

I was pretty sure he meant it. And if that really was why Nigu thought I was being unfair, I could see where he was coming from because female adventurers were rare. I’d forgotten that because I’d met Sheya and Chikka early on, and now Liluetta and Yune were part of my party, but most adventurers were men. And if Liluetta and Yune happened to be Nigu or Hilteeth’s type, I could see why that would feel unfair.

Guess I just have to accept that.

“Or maybe,” Waine said, “you’re jealous ’cause he knows how to read and write, and he got party members who can do it too.”

Wait. Wait, wait, wait.

“This is about reading?!” I turned to look at Nigu and Hilteeth.

And when they saw my face...

“That’s it. That’s today’s punch this guy moment,” Nigu said.

“Yeah. We’re definitely beating him up now,” Hilteeth added.

“Before, staff at the counter would help you find a job that matches your skills. But two of them quit recently and left the place shorthanded. Now, when you ask for help, all they say is ‘Check the board.’” Waine shrugged with a tired sigh.

Now that I thought about it, Waine and I had only met and started talking because he couldn’t read the requests.

“Here’s the problem,” he continued. “These two can’t read or write worth a damn. They can’t even tell what the job is. There’s an old lady across the street who’ll read what you bring her, but she charges money and they’re broke. So they’re stuck doing the same permanent jobs that never change, like rat hunts and herb gathering.”

Wasn’t Waine rat hunting for a while too? That nearly slipped out of my mouth, but I stopped myself just in time. That was close. Saying that would’ve made it three against one.

“Anyway, they’ve been adventurers for half a year, so I guess they figured it was about time to rank up. The other day, they went and found a request that looked like a goblin extermination and had the old lady read it for them. The job ended up being about tracking goblins spotted near a village in the mountains, so these two idiots who were raised in town and don’t know a thing about mountain tracking wasted a whole day wandering around before coming back empty-handed.”

“Mountain tracking, huh...”

I remembered going into the mountains before I met Liluetta and Yune, back when we’d been after the goblins who’d killed Old Badger. Chikka’s tracking had been amazing on that quest. I didn’t have her skills, but I could probably track something if I had a trail to follow. Spotting footprints and broken branches were basics, and I’d also learned to watch my surroundings while looking for herbs and to always notice something dangerous before it noticed me. Old Badger had drilled that into me, and I still remembered every word.

But could Nigu and Hilteeth really pull that off? They grew up in town like Liluetta and Yune, so I really doubted it.

“What did these geniuses learn from their mistake?” Waine pointed at the two of them. “They decided to get a party member who could actually read and tried asking someone who definitely could, the little lady from the Magnan family. But instead of being upfront, they made up some excuse about wanting her connections or whatever and got rejected hard.”

Nigu and Hilteeth were crouched down and staring at the ground like they were carrying the weight of the world.

Well, that filled in most of the blanks. Anyone would think a girl from a rich merchant family could read, and they would be right. But Nigu and Hilteeth had made it weird and started saying a bunch of stuff about wanting Magnan perks instead of admitting they needed help. Of course she’d gotten angry. Then they’d lost it when they saw me, a kid who can already read, teaming up with Liluetta and Yune.

I get it now. I’d thought these two were kind of mean, but they’re actually mean and dumb.

“If you’d been honest about it,” I told them, “Liluetta wouldn’t have turned you down the way she did. She still would’ve made fun of you, though.”

“That part sucks the most!” Nigu complained. “We would’ve looked stupid!”

“A little girl looking down on us when we’re trying to start our first party? That’s hell, man,” said Hilteeth.

These two are hopeless. They’ll probably be a duo forever.

“Anyway! That’s why you’re the one who’s not fair!” Nigu snapped. “You’re just some brat, but you can read and write, and you took other people who can too!”

“Even if I wasn’t around, Liluetta and Yune still wouldn’t have picked you two.”

“That’s not the point! It’s about sharing the wealth! Do you even know how many adventurers can’t read?”

“Nope. And I don’t care. It’s not my problem.”

How would I know that, and why should I? Don’t expect me to be in the know when I live in a stable.

Wait, was this why they suddenly wanted to train together? To piss me off? Not because they respected Waine or anything? That would explain why they kept fighting in ways that made me want to scream.

Ugh. What is their deal?! I didn’t do anything wrong.

“Tch! You better remember this, brat! We’re definitely ranking up first! There’s no way we’re losing to you!” Nigu ranted.

Oh. Right. There’s that too. They don’t want my party to reach Rank E before them. Yeah, I still don’t care. How petty can they be?

“That new request on the far right, the one they just put up today, is for clearing out a small group of goblins from a mountain cabin.”

I read all the job postings on the request board, even the ones that weren’t relevant to us, because that was what Old Badger had taught me. Learning where dangerous monsters were from these requests was a way to stay safe.

“Now that you know where the goblins are, doing the job shouldn’t be a problem, right? You might want to take it before someone else does.”

Nigu and Hilteeth looked at me in shock before turning to face each other. And then they looked right back at me again.

“Our new friend!” they yelled.

I frowned. “No way.”

They tried to throw their arms around me, so I stuck both of my arms out and pushed their faces away with my fists.

***

I don’t think today went very well...

As I knelt before our family altar, praying to the holy sigils, I could feel a furrow between my brows. I came from a long line of clerics, so even our modest house had its own altar. There was no statue, but the sigils were all here. At the center was the sigil of Amana, the Earth Mother, surrounded by the four other major gods: Wagundal, the god of war, Mohatezze-Aus, the god of weather, Yomu, the god of fated encounters, and Yalfzag, the goddess of destiny.

Most homes wouldn’t have an altar. The ones that did would probably only have the goddess Amana’s sigil. Looking at it that way, we had a nice altar. For a cleric family, though, it was really quite simple and nowhere near the grandeur of a church’s sanctum. Still, I loved this altar. Ever since I was a child, before I even entered the sanctuary for my studies, I always felt closer to the gods when I prayed here.

I folded my hands at my chest the same way I had since I was little, dropped to both knees, closed my eyes, and asked the Earth Mother a question.

O Amana, as your cleric, did I act shamefully today?

I’d volunteered to open the doors, but then I’d gotten too scared to do it once I’d realized someone living instead of a spirit of the departed might be inside. Hiding behind Kiri-o’s back for most of the search was embarrassing, and screaming and running away from the ghost broom in the end was worse. And after that, I’d just followed my party around like a duckling. I didn’t help much... No. I was no good, and I had no excuses.

“That job was supposed to be my moment to shine...”

Yesterday, the young lady had done a great job using her detection magic. Kiri-o was always great at foraging herbs. I was the only one who hadn’t contributed yet, and that was why I’d been so eager about today’s job.

Yes. I had chosen the haunted house request. I’d even noticed Kiri-o looking a little hesitant about it yesterday, but I’d pushed for it because I’d thought it would be my chance to show what I could do with sacred magic. But the results...

“Well, there weren’t any actual ghosts, sooo...”

Sacred magic can offer protection, but it was really for fighting the undead. So there was nothing I could do without them around. There was no need for healing spells either, since nobody was injured. Not doing anything today was just a matter of course.

In fact, isn’t it good if the enemies I’m useful against never show up?

“But the way I behaved today was shameful.”

Coming up excuses in front of the gods’ holy sigils was not okay for an apprentice cleric. Thinking about how I really should’ve acted when I’d gotten scared—brave and composed, like a proper cleric—made me feel a little down, but...

“I’ll do better tomorrow. I promise.” With my hands folded, I offered my vow to the altar I’d known since I was a child.

Chapter 4: A Noble Yet Hollow Image

I woke up while it was still dark and stretched my arms and legs. When I peeked out the window, I saw the sky was only just starting to get light—it was still too early to get up.

I’d gone to bed earlier than usual last night. Nigu and Hilteeth were going on a goblin hunt today, so Waine had let me go early while he’d stayed behind to train them. Thanks to that, I felt refreshed even though it was still so early. At least I wouldn’t be all groggy and end up picking a job carelessly like I had yesterday.

There was still time before Liluetta and Yune would show up at the guild. I was too awake to fall back asleep and too worried I wouldn’t wake up in time if I did doze off again. So I got ready like always and left my stall, but then I noticed something odd: Mercetino wasn’t there. Did he escape? I didn’t think so, because his stall gate was closed and the latch was in place. He’d definitely been there last night, so someone must’ve taken him out. I had a pretty good guess about who had done that.

I walked out of the stable and looked around. That person was standing a short distance away.

“Good morning, Peridot.”

“Ah, good morning, Kiriand. Beautiful day, isn’t it?” He greeted me with his usual sparkling smile.

Mercetino already had some of his tack on, and his saddle was on the ground next to him. He closed his eyes and looked happy when Peridot gently stroked his neck. Watching that made me hesitate to say what I already didn’t want to say, but I had to.

“I lost again,” I told Peridot.

Peridot nodded. “I see.”

That was all he said, even though I’d declared I would win the next time I fought Nigu and Hilteeth. I’d had to convince myself to tell him I’d lost and thought I would have to explain how it’d happened, because I’d broken my promise to win. But his casual reaction caught me off guard.

“You’re going to win next time, right?”

Peridot didn’t make that question a big deal at all. It sounded like he was asking me what I wanted for breakfast.

But can I win? Yesterday, Nigu and Hilteeth weren’t full of openings like they were when I first fought them. They dealt with the strategies I came up with, and I had no advantage in size, technique, or experience. Can I really beat them?

Yes.

“I will.” I nodded. I had no reason to believe I could and no plan to make it happen. I hadn’t worked anything out at all, but I just didn’t want to admit I couldn’t win.

“Heh. Good answer. I’m looking forward to it.”

Peridot’s smile was sincere, with no hidden meanings, and that made me start regretting what I’d said. But if someone was counting on me, I had to do my best.

“By the way, you’re up early,” I said.

Sunrise was still a ways off. I was pretty sure Peridot didn’t live at the guild, so he probably had to leave wherever he was sleeping in the middle of the night to get here this early. Even though their ages, looks, and personalities were totally different, something about Peridot reminded me of Old Badger. He’d always been up before everyone else and crunching raw vegetables for breakfast because the kitchen wasn’t ready.

“Heh. Going to bed early and getting up early is a particular skill of mine. I find rising before dawn and going for a ride with Mercetino to be much more meaningful than staying up late and sleeping in.”

So he’s going somewhere. Since he’s getting started this early, maybe he’s heading someplace farther away where he and Mercetino can have a good run.

“You really love horses, huh?”

“Well, yes. But it’s not just that. We’re partners.” He checked the reins one more time, then grabbed the saddle and hoisted it onto Mercetino’s back and fastened it easily.

I thought about offering to help, but I held back because I had no idea what I could do. We had horses back in the village, but they were a lot smaller and didn’t wear gear as fancy as this.

“Mercetino’s pretty calm, right? Truth is, when it comes to taking a horse into battle, you want one with a bit of fire in them. Sometimes you’re not just fighting monsters while riding. You’re charging in and letting the horse help you kick through.”

I realized I’d never actually seen my gray neighbor act rowdy. He did eat my valenwort once, but that was on me because I’d hung the herbs up to dry where he could reach. He was definitely a calm and gentle horse if that was the worst mischief on his record.

“Horses, like people, have lots of different personalities. Some are friendly and trot right up when a stranger comes by, some are shy and keep their distance, and others puff themselves up and try to scare people off. The leader of Mercetino’s herd at the ranch where he came from was a big fellow who was aggressive enough to bite. Would’ve been a pain to manage, but he also would’ve been one hell of a warhorse.”

“But you wanted a white horse, right? Is that why you didn’t buy the leader horse?”

“That was part of it, yes.” Peridot’s smile looked warm and nostalgic.

If I remembered right, dapple-gray horses like Mercetino turned white as they got older. I’d figured Peridot had chosen him because there weren’t any white horses around, but maybe there was more to it than that.

“When I went to the ranch to buy a horse, Mercetino had wandered away from the others and was just standing and staring past the fence. He didn’t seem to care about any visitors and just kept watching something in the distance.”

Nothing shakes this horse. I guess he’s always been like that.

“Even when other horses were racing nearby, or when the leader of the herd got close, he didn’t flinch. I thought he was strange and kept watching him, and it didn’t take long for me to figure him out.”

Little by little, the sky was getting brighter in the east. But we were still draped in darkness, with a deep, deep blue in the west.

“He was bored. That’s all.” The smile on Peridot’s face was as soft and beautiful as the sky just before dawn. “Once I realized that, I put my money down. I wanted a companion who longed for the world beyond the fence, not one who thought they were king of the paddock.”

I understood what he meant. Maybe a fiercer horse was better in a fight, but for a traveling companion on an adventure, someone who would enjoy the journey with you was—

“Are you enjoying your adventure?”

Peridot’s question froze my thoughts.

Before they could thaw out, he laughed and said, “Heh. You’re a little like Mercetino.” He gave the reins a tug, and Mercetino started walking happily beside him.

Being compared to a horse felt kind of weird, but I could tell he meant it as a compliment.

“Be careful, Kiriand. Danger and adventure go hand in hand. The more fun you’re having, the easier it is to forget what your life’s really worth.”

***

Later that morning, the three of us checked the new requests and talked about which one to take. I’d left the decision to Liluetta and Yune yesterday because I was way too sleepy, but that really wasn’t a good thing to do. So today, I was doing my best to understand each job, avoid picking something scary, and recommend the request that best suited us.

In the end, we were split three ways.

“Getting berries for dyeing fabric.”

“Finding a lost cat.”

“Assisting the development of a new weapon for ground warfare.”

Yup. Pure chaos. What even is that last one?

Liluetta frowned at the request I’d chosen. “Kiri, that one’s basically herb gathering, right? Since the pay is based on how much we collect, it might be hard for us to earn enough.”

“Right, right,” Yune added. “Gathering jobs aren’t bad, but we need to make sure we’re all earning our share.”

They both looked skeptical about the one I’d picked. It was a gathering job, but it was different from the usual herb-gathering request.

“We can earn decent money by collecting pricier items or filling our baskets,” I said. “And this request tells us where the berries grow, so we won’t have to look for them. We just fill our baskets and head home. We won’t earn as much as we did with the herbs from that mana pool, but I think this’ll still pay better than a standard gathering job.”

I liked gathering, and I thought this request seemed really good for us. We already had baskets, and there was no reason to avoid this kind of job if we could make decent money.

“I think Yune’s lost cat request would earn us even less,” I pointed out.

“Agreed,” said Liluetta. “And looking for a cat doesn’t feel like proper adventurer work.”

“But I was thinking about how our party is good at finding things,” Yune explained. “With the young lady’s detection spell and Kiri-o’s sharp eyes, we can find just about anything, right? I thought we could lean into our strengths.”

“You just like cats,” Liluetta cut in.

Huh, so Yune’s a cat lover.

“Besides, using a detection spell to find a specific cat is difficult. Even if I narrow it down by color and gender, the spell would react to all cats with that description. And cats don’t stay still, right? If I cast detection, but the cat moves by the time we get there, we could end up repeating that process until I run out of magical energy. What do we do if that happens but we still haven’t found the cat?”

Detection was useful, but it didn’t sound easy to use. Looking for a specific cat was a problem because the spell only pointed in a general direction and wasn’t good for moving targets. Yune’s logic made sense, and I did feel bad for the poor lost kitty, so at first I’d been okay with taking that request. I wasn’t so sure, now. On top of Liluetta’s concerns, I didn’t feel confident about finding a cat in a town where I still didn’t know my way around.

“Compared to the one you picked, my lady, I think mine’s a lot easier to understand,” said Yune.

“She’s got a point,” I said. “What did you choose, Liluetta?”

Hers clearly stood out from the others. It was the kind of job that really made you go, Adventurers do this kind of stuff too?!

“They’re developing a new weapon—a large wheel embedded with a fire-element magic stone,” Liluetta explained. “It’s designed to roll into enemy lines on its own and explode using rotation and detonation magic circles. They want a magic user and some assistants to help test a prototype. Don’t you think combining the shape of a wheel with a magic circle is clever?”

It did say “magic user required,” and the testing grounds were just outside town in a grassy field, so it probably wasn’t that dangerous. In that sense, it might’ve been the best request for us. But I had a bad feeling... A really bad feeling...

“I hate to admit it,” Liluetta continued, “but our party’s biggest weakness is our lack of firepower. If this new weapon can be adapted for adventurers, it could become a major asset for us.”

I was kind of moved by that—Liluetta was really thinking about how to make our party better. I still had that uneasy feeling, but if they could shrink that thing down and make it easy for adventurers to carry around, it might be really useful. But fire magic stones had to be expensive, right? Even if we could use it, we wouldn’t be able to afford it. I’d seen simple, throwable items at the armorer’s shop that used fire magic stones. I was pretty sure there were even magic fire arrows. All of them were pricey.

“If it turns out to be a good product,” Yune said, “the Magnans might invest. It could be a good business opportunity.”

I turned to Liluetta.

She looked away. “I-I mean, I am a Magnan and an adventurer. It’s only natural for me to consider the financial benefits.”

“Well, that’s not a bad thing,” I said.

Liluetta had joined the guild to find adventurers she could introduce to the Magnan Company and leads on business opportunities. So I figured she would be extra motivated to take on jobs like this one, though I didn’t think this request had anything to do with the sea salt guild.

But I guess that’s not for me to decide. This is tough...

I still thought the berry request was our best choice for playing it safe, but the one Yune had suggested was about helping someone—well, a cat—and there was almost no chance we would be in danger looking for it in town. Then again, thinking about Liluetta’s goals made me want to choose the request she’d picked.

As I hesitated, I found myself thinking about Nigu and Hilteeth last night and how lucky my party was. We only had all these choices because we could read. Right after I’d told Nigu and Hilteeth about the goblin request, they’d ripped it off the wall and taken it straight to the counter. They were probably already on their way to that village now, and they wouldn’t have known about the new requests that included more goblin hunts. If they could read, they probably would’ve had a hard time deciding too.

“Hey. You three.” Barque, the leader of the guild, was glaring down at us like we were in trouble.

“Oh, sorry. We’ll move. Come on, let’s talk it over somewhere else.”

“Yes, that’s probably best. We’re in the way here.”

“We’ll be more careful next time.”

He was probably there to post a new job, so all three of us stepped aside. It was important to discuss the requests before choosing one, but we needed to pay more attention to where we were standing—especially on days like this when we couldn’t agree on anything.

“That’s not it. I need a word,” said Barque.

His voice sounded heavier than usual. When I glanced up at his face, his expression was serious.

“You, the healer. You can treat injuries?” he asked.

“Uh... Yes, I can use some basic healing magic,” Yune answered.

“You sure?” Barque turned to Liluetta to double-check.

“She’s sure,” said Liluetta. “What’s this about? Are you doubting Yune?”

“Some people lie to get into a party. Can’t be too careful.”

“Don’t lump us in with people like that.”

I’d heard stories about people doing that before. You would think a lie would get exposed right away, but there were still people willing to make up stories just to join a party. Since Barque ran this guild, he had to be cautious. This wasn’t about him not trusting Yune—he was only doing his job.

“It’s true. Yune healed me when I got hurt.” I pointed at the browplate I always wore, where it still had a slash mark from before.

When that goblin had hit my head with its dagger, the wound had been too deep for the cloth on my browplate to stop the bleeding. I’d collapsed on the spot right after the battle. But when I’d woken up, Yune had completely healed me with her magic. This browplate plus the fact that I didn’t have a scar proved Yune wasn’t lying. She’d healed the blister on Liluetta’s heel too.

“I remember now.” Barque nodded a few times as he glanced at my browplate. He looked at each of us, then said, “Request for a party with a healer just came in. A pack of monsters attacked a fishin’ boat and ran it aground on the southwestern coast. The client is one of the survivin’ crew. You’ll be treatin’ and evacuatin’ two of his crewmates who are too injured to move.”

All three of us drew in a sharp breath.

“You’re the only healer in the guild right now, girl. Go,” said Barque.

Healers treat wounds, cure illnesses, and neutralize poisons. In other words, Yune’s time to shine only comes after something bad happens...

“This way! Over here!”

Our client was a boy with dark, suntanned skin. I guessed he was younger than Yune, probably around twelve or thirteen, and he seemed like he could be a rookie at a fisher’s guild if this town had one of those. With his young-looking face, his lanky body under light and practical clothes, and his still-high-pitched voice, everything about him said he was new to a fishing crew.

The three of us followed him southwest to the coast.

“Isn’t this the kind of job the church is supposed to handle?” Liluetta kept her voice low enough to make sure the boy couldn’t hear.

I couldn’t blame her for asking, because I was thinking the same thing. I knew the situation was urgent, people were injured, and Yune was the only healer at the guild when the request had come in. But we’d been trying to stick to safe jobs, and here we were marching toward a monster attack that had just happened. It was hard to feel great about that.

“The church is on the other side of the river,” Yune explained quietly. “The adventurer’s guild is closer to where we are now, and not a lot of healers are allowed to leave town.”

The church was on the east side of town. When something happened on the west side, the adventurer’s guild was closer. And if a healer could only heal, not fight, then of course they wouldn’t be allowed to go where monsters might still be lurking. Maybe Yune had been one of those church healers who couldn’t leave town before she became an adventurer. Maybe someone had asked her for help before, and she’d had to say no because the situation had been too dangerous.

Healers were rare, and healers who were adventurers were even rarer. A party with a healer in it had to take jobs like this.

“There it is!”

We’d left the road behind and gone down a rocky stretch of coastline. Before long, the fishing boat came into view. It was partly hidden by a huge rock formation worn smooth by years of crashing waves. The boat itself was long and narrow, with nearly half of it stranded high up on the rocks, but maybe that was a good thing. If the boat hadn’t gotten stuck like that, the hole in the bottom might’ve sent it to the bottom of the sea.

“There are still injured people aboard, but...” Yune’s voice wavered as she spotted the two injured crew members.

I could see why—a pack of monsters were surrounding the boat.

“Blue skin, humanoid bodies, fish heads... Sahuagin!” Liluetta called out.

I knew she was right because of the monsters’ glistening blue bodies. The way the light bounced off them made it clear that they were covered in wet scales. As we got closer, their shapes were easier to see. They were sort of like humans but twisted and strange. Their hunched backs rose into jagged fins that looked like manes stabbing toward the sky. Sleek fish heads with no expressions at all sat between broad shoulders, and their webbed hands gripped wicked-looking tridents tipped with barbs that could easily skewer a person.

A chill ran down my spine. Goblins were ugly and scary, but they weren’t as terrifying as this. Sahuagin were kind of shaped like humans, but they were dark and horrible creatures of the sea. There was no way to tell where their glassy fish eyes were looking and no way to see any emotion in them other than bloodlust. They weren’t enemies you could reason with. They just killed—I felt that in my bones.

There were five of them on land and maybe ten more in the shallows with their heads poking above the water as they circled the fishing boat.

“This is bad. They’ve surrounded the whole area.” Liluetta was no longer grumbling, and her clear, sharp eyes were focused on the situation.

It wasn’t like she’d been against taking the request, and I knew she understood how urgent and serious this was. That was why we were all here. But this job was the worst possible match for our party.

Yune stared at the sahuagin with a look close to despair. “There’s no way we can beat that many.”

She wasn’t wrong. Even if I tried to distract them, I’d never survive long enough to buy her any time to cast spells or do anything. They’d skewer me all at once.

“This way, hurry!” It was too easy to picture the worst-case scenario, so I ducked behind a large rock for cover and told everyone to do the same.

Liluetta and Yune followed without a word, and the boy who’d brought us here did too. Even a complete rookie could see that we couldn’t just charge in, so we needed a plan.

“Can you tell me what happened? How it ended up like this?” I asked our client.

The sahuagin hadn’t noticed us yet, and the two crew members on the boat looked like they were still alive. Even after all the time it’d taken this boy to run to the guild and for us to get here, the monsters were just circling around. So we had some time to work with... I hoped.

“Th-The sahuagin grabbed our nets while we were fishing, sir! Just doing a normal haul. Never had trouble like this before! We cut the nets loose, they chased us, then we panicked and crashed into the rocks. That’s how we got stuck, sir. The captain twisted his ankle in the crash, and the other guy hit his head and passed out.”

He looked older than me, but he called me “sir” and talked to me politely. Maybe he always talked like that, or maybe he was too rattled by what was happening, but it felt kind of weird. This wasn’t the time for that, though. I turned back to the boat.

It was a long, narrow vessel. I still didn’t know a thing about boats and ships—the first time I’d seen one was here in Hiriyenka. But it seemed plenty big for a three-man crew. The extra space was probably for gear and fish. Two adult men were still onboard: a burly man with a full beard favoring one leg while trying to keep the sahuagin at bay with a harpoon and another man who seemed to be doing much worse. He was slumped over near the mast, barely moving, with one hand pressed against his bald head.

The boy, our client, probably ran all the way to the adventurer’s guild himself because the injured crew members couldn’t move. That was bad, because there was no way we could carry two grown men off the boat.

Liluetta coolly assessed the situation. “The crash launching the vessel so high onto the rocks was a stroke of luck. The deck’s elevated now, and the anti-sahuagin boards are doing their job, so those things can’t climb up easily.”

The boat must’ve hit the coast fast, because half of it was propped up against a boulder. The deck was now way up high, so the sahuagin couldn’t just hop on. They would have to climb, but there were planks sticking out from the side of the boat keeping them from doing that.

Liluetta called them anti-sahuagin boards. That has to mean those monsters attack boats a lot.

“But they might be able to board from that boulder the boat’s leaning on,” said Yune.

The rock she was pointing to was tall enough, and one of the sahuagin already had its hand on it. But it wasn’t climbing yet.

“Sahuagin are fast underwater, but they move slowly on land,” Liluetta explained. “And their skin dries out quickly. They have to return to the water once that happens, so they can’t stay out for long. Even if they climb that rock, they’ll dry out before they get to the ship.”

Just then, one of the sahuagin slid off the boulder and back into the sea. A moment later, another one emerged from the water to take its place.

That doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Are they taking turns?

“If they can’t board the ship, maybe we should just leave them alone and wait it out?” I suggested.

“No way!” Yune cried. She was usually so gentle and relaxed, but now she sounded desperate. “The captain might be fine with that sprained ankle, but the man who hit his head needs treatment right away!”

“Sahuagin are aggressive and relentless.” Liluetta calmly but firmly shut my idea down.

Yune’s urgency and Liluetta’s knowledge crushed any hope I’d had that we could just wait this out. The injured men were in real danger, and we didn’t know how much longer the sahuagin would hang around without attacking. We couldn’t afford to do nothing.

What now? What do we do?

***

“And that’s the kind of boy Kiriand is. Amazing, right?”

As Peridot led his horse by the reins along the old road that was now an overgrown forest path, his bright laughter rang out. His voice was a little too cheerful and too polished like always, and—as usual—it pissed me off.

“Bwa ha ha! I see, I see! So that’s what Old Badger’s apprentice is like, huh? What a fascinating child!” The dwarf in full plate armor shouldered his massive halberd and let out a booming laugh that made his thick black beard shake. He was way too loud.

“Hee hee hee, how wonderful. To live in a stable himself while going out of his way to help someone else at a loss to his own gain... Hee hee. Children’s perspectives are always surprising and never fail to remind us of our own humble beginnings.

“Altruism without reward is a rare virtue even among those who serve the gods. Certain sects consider the desire to be thanked and the need to feel good about oneself as impure. From that perspective, Kiriand’s actions may embody an ideal way of living.

“Ah, ah! To maintain such purity from birth to death is something only a handful of saints in history have ever achieved. Even we, humble servants of the divine, must accumulate countless acts of impure good until they become second nature to us—until we attain true, pure virtue. Yet that child is good without effort.

“Oh, may the boy know happiness. Even if a shadow should one day fall upon his heart, may the brilliance of his soul never dim.” The skinny man in a clergyman’s robes lifted his head and prayed to the gods.

I can never figure out what the heck this guy’s talking about. All I know is that these two members of Seabird Tempest are just loud.

“Oho! Virtue, was it? Amusing take, that. You may be a cleric, but I never would’ve guessed you cared about such things,” said Dardan of the Fire Dragon’s Flask.

Corkbliz of the Sacred Chalice’s response was five times longer than it needed to be. “I have no interest in such things. Classifying goodwill by purity or lack thereof is a matter of philosophy, but a true servant of the gods must value action above all else—good deeds over goodwill. Make an effort to save those in need and leave the debate to those with time to waste. Though, to be fair, there are many cases where an act motivated by good intentions results in greater harm. Thoughtless actions are always dangerous, you see.”

“Hah! I see, I see! Bwa ha ha!”

“Hee hee hee hee.”

The two of them—a warrior who loved alcohol so much he started a brewery but ran it into the ground and now funded it through adventuring and a holy mage who loved alcohol so much he got drunk in the middle of an important church ceremony and got kicked out—laughed together like absolute fools. Both were in peak form today.

“Waine, are they actually sober?” The look on Sheya’s face as she walked beside me clearly said, I want to go home. She didn’t talk much, but I’d gotten better at reading her expressions.

And I couldn’t blame her, because guess what? I was thinking the same exact thing. I was already burned out from dealing with Peridot for the last two days, and now we had two more loud idiots.

“They’re even more annoying with alcohol in them,” I told her.

Sheya had only recently started staying late at the guild, so it was no surprise she hadn’t seen those two drunk yet. But it was a regular thing. Whenever those two hit the booze, we usually got a barroom brawl and a pile of knocked-out adventurers. The two of them would drink all night and entertain themselves with the carnage. I hadn’t seen them around for a while, since they’d been away on a job—those had been peaceful days.

I guess it’s back to the drunken hellscape now.

“Heh, I knew you two would understand just how impressive Kiriand is. That’s right. He’s a boy who might grow up to be a hero one day!”

Peridot’s dapple-gray horse seemed to be having a good time around all this nature. Peridot’s mood was just as good—he flipped his long hair with a smug grin like someone had just called him a future hero. I wasn’t sure, but he probably wasn’t drunk. The guy was a lightweight.

“Splendid! To think Old Badger’s disciple is a hero in the making. Someday, we must share a drink together!”

“Hee hee, I cannot wait for the day that boy is old enough to drink. How many years will it be, I wonder? One can never have too many reasons to live or too many hopes to cling to. Oh! I’ve a wonderful idea. When we get back, I must purchase a fine bottle of wine. Then, once he’s of age, we’ll open it together. Hee hee hee hee, what kind of bottle shall I get? Since he won’t be accustomed to alcohol, perhaps something smooth with a refreshing bouquet?”

“Bwa ha ha! We’ll just have to resist the urge to drink it early, eh?”

I trudged along at the back of the group. Peridot, the delusional weirdo, Teteni, who was pretty much invisible, and Dardan and Corkbliz, two booze-addled drunks who only thought about, well, booze. These misfits working together in a real adventuring party was actually kind of amazing. Barque would’ve kicked this whole crew out of the guild, except they really had skills.

“Peri, we’re almost at the place tiny told us about.” Chikka, who was leading the group, spoke so low and quiet that I almost didn’t recognize her voice.

That’s not good. She’s about to explode.

“Looks like it,” Peridot said smoothly. “Let’s all hush.”

Both Dardan and Corkbliz nodded and went quiet. Their ability to switch gears so fast pissed me off even more. It proved they were top-class adventurers, but knowing that just made it worse.

If they can be quiet, why do they talk so damn much all the time?

“Why do we need to be quiet?” Sheya asked.

Now that everyone else had shut their mouths, her question sounded unusually clear. It was a good question too. I hadn’t thought of it because I was just happy for some peace and quiet, but Peridot’s order was strange. He was just looking for herbs, so making noise shouldn’t matter. Plants weren’t gonna run away after hearing us. Being quiet because of monsters in the woods was one thing, but this was a safe area where Old Badger used to gather all the time. Nothing here could put this party on the back foot.

“Good question.” Peridot winked and pointed up the old road. “Let’s walk and talk.”

So he did have a good reason. He was pointing at a narrow game trail that veered off the old road into the forest. Somehow, I knew whatever was waiting for us was gonna be bad news.

“Ahem. As it happens, we have just returned from a rather lengthy assignment,” he began.

Not much of a reveal. Everyone knew this loud-ass crew was gone for a while.

“The job had to do with some skirmish between the local underworld factions. Nothing fun or exciting. The leader of the western gang and the leader of the eastern gang were supposedly going to pull something at the gambling ship, and the request was to go see what happens and try to stop it if it looks bad. Terribly vague. We should’ve known better than to take a guild quest from the lord.”

That’s the kind of stuff they’ve been doing?

“Sounding real casual about an insanely shady job...” I’d meant to listen until the end of his story, but what he was saying was so out of step with how he was saying it that I had to make some kind of comment.

“It really wasn’t a big deal. I’d take goblin extermination over that any day. We just played the part of some up-and-coming, gambling-crazed adventurers. Once we earned a reputation as regular high rollers on the ship, the rest was simple. We gathered intel, raised a bit of a ruckus, then handed everything over to the guards.”

“Wasn’t the request just to see what happens?”

“Well, they were all criminals. What’s the point of playing nice with them?” Peridot shrugged with a what can you do? kind of look. The guy didn’t feel bad about getting involved, which was almost refreshing.

This one’s on Barque. Or maybe the lord, since he might’ve handpicked this party for the job. Either way, choosing Seabird was a mistake. You don’t hand a job like that to this bunch.

“Anyway,” said Peridot, “we cleaned up that little mess.”

“Little mess, he says...” I grumbled.

“But! In the middle of that job, I stumbled upon something interesting. I just couldn’t bring myself to ignore it, and that’s why we’re walking through the woods.”

“‘Something interesting’?” Sheya asked.

Until now, this lazy mage wasn’t even part of the conversation at all. I was stuck talking to Peridot today, which was really exhausting.

“Peri, I found some nacturus. What now?” Chikka called out.

“Huh?!” Peridot’s head snapped up like someone had jolted him.

Up ahead, Chikka pointed to a patch of ground with a red flower. Small petals grew in a long, skinny cluster, and it sort of looked like a plant I’d seen in the south. I had no idea how much this thing was worth, though. I’d heard it was a decent amount, but how much did a single stalk even go for?

“Oh! Nacturus in bloom! So this is the beautiful flower it grows into!” Peridot let go of his horse’s reins, rushed to the flower, dropped to his knees, and cheered like a little kid on his birthday.

He did say he never found any nacturus on his own. I guess he really did just want to see one. What a weirdo.

I spotted more red flowers scattered nearby. It was supposed to be rare, but this area had a few growing.

“Oho, a fine-looking bloom,” rumbled Dardan. “Small, but it’d look real pretty floating in a drink.”

“Ahhh, excellent,” said Corkbliz. “Floating flowers in liquor. Pleasing to the eye, and the aroma adds an extra layer of enjoyment. With a fragrance like this, I’d say it pairs better with a barley-based spirit than a fruit wine, wouldn’t you? Ahhhhh, it makes me want to try it myself. Hee hee. Since the root’s used medicinally, perhaps we could borrow a few blooms even if we’re leaving the harvest for Kiriand?”

“Heh. You two always bring such different perspectives,” Peridot said with a wry smile. “But this herb is meant for magical use. It’s toxic, and I’d advise against using it in a drink.”

The two drunks crouched down beside him for a closer look. It was a weird scene, with three grown men huddled shoulder to shoulder around a tiny flower. Chikka looked creeped out and backed away, but I thought seeing them chuckling and chatting over a flower like that showed how well this party got along.

“Hmm, hmm. It looks like a good size, I think? Though I’ve never seen one in person before, so I can’t say for sure. I’ll let Kiriand know when we get back. Ah, ah, no, Mercetino. You mustn’t eat this herb. I told you, it’s poisonous.” After giving the flower a long, hard look and gently nudging his curious horse away, Peridot stood back up without picking the herb.

A soft chirp, chirp, chirp rang out nearby, like it’d been waiting for him to stand. It sounded like birdsong, but a little off. Too perfect.

“A bird whistle. That our rabbit?” Chikka’s sharp ears let her catch on right away.

The bright-eyed leader of Seabird Tempest smiled and nodded. “Looks like we’re on the right track. Let’s keep going. Ah, that’s a relief. I was actually a little worried, you know.”

Whether it was because of the herb or the bird whistle signal, Peridot was in an even better mood. He headed deeper into the woods without bothering to look around for the herb he’d come here to find.

Even I can tell this little adventure really starts now. At least this weirdo’s convinced something’s out there.

“Earlier. ‘Something interesting.’ What was it?” Sheya asked. She seemed at least a little intrigued by Peridot’s story. But judging by the sound of her voice, she was irritated too.

“Ah, right, right. That.” Peridot nodded. He veered off the animal trail into dense underbrush, but he still walked confidently with his spear in one hand and his horse’s reins in the other. The uneven ground didn’t seem to bother him at all.

“The gambling ship was registered as a fishing vessel,” Peridot explained. “All it does is head out a little ways and come right back, so of course it can’t pretend to be a merchant ship. But thanks to that little technicality, no one inspects the cargo.”

This sounded sketchy already, and I was starting to wish Sheya hadn’t asked.

“Well, during that job I mentioned, we happened to spot some cargo that gave us a very bad feeling. We were dealing with a gambling ship, after all, and we figured it had to be run by one of the underground gangs—the west, the east, or maybe even a third party. I don’t know. But someone was up to no good. They started unloading cargo onto an uninhabited island, and that’s when we figured their operation out: They were stashing whatever they’ve got on the island and waiting for a departing merchant vessel to pick it up later. No one notices because everyone’s too busy gambling.”

Sheya and Chikka were both holding their heads like they had headaches, and I rubbed my forehead too. So much for herb gathering.

“In other words, smuggling. Naturally, we made a little side trip to that island, confirmed what was in those crates, then dumped it all into the sea. Ah, there it is. The cargo.”

Peridot crouched down and out of sight, while Dardan and Corkbliz silently took cover behind the trees. Even the horse dropped close to the ground. We followed their lead, staying low and peering through the leaves.

Beyond the trees, a large clearing had been carved out of the forest. A field with tall, strange, sickly colored plants lined up in long rows. Ten skinny kids in rags looked like they were harvesting the plants, and maybe fifteen rough-looking men with weapons stood around watching the kids like guards. A few ramshackle log huts stood off to one side, and it looked like there were more people inside.

“When we cracked open one of those strange crates we found on the island,” Peridot said, “what do you think we found? A suspicious white powder made from a special herb. Since they were shipping it out, we figured there had to be a production site somewhere. Admittedly, I didn’t expect we’d actually find it, but here we are.”

In a way, we were looking for herbs all along.

“Disgusting business,” Dardan growled. “That stuff only brings ruin to the fools who use it.”

“Indeed.” Corkbliz nodded solemnly. “With whatever fleeting pleasure it offers, it ravages the body, erodes the mind, and shackles the user with addiction. Eventually, they become criminals or mere husks of their former selves. The devil’s drug. As one who serves the divine, I cannot abide those who manufacture and profit from such filth. If we don’t pass judgment upon them, then I no longer have the right to call myself a man of faith.”

Coming from one of the guild’s resident drunks, that sermon hits like a wet noodle.

“I was hoping Old Badger would know if this stuff was being made somewhere near town,” said Peridot, “because he knew this entire area like the back of his hand. But, well, he passed while we were away.”

“That’s why you started asking the kid questions,” I muttered.

“Mm. I thought I could find a hint of some kind. Of course, I couldn’t explain the situation to a child, so I tried to be tactful. And then he mentioned something curious: Old Badger had warned him not to pick nacturus now because it was out of season. As you can see, they’re in bloom. That’s when it all clicked. Deduced in an instant, heh heh.”

Peridot’s smug expression pissed me off, but what he’d just explained made me think. Basically, Old Badger knew this area was dangerous. Maybe he’d run into those shady-looking thugs, or maybe he’d seen footprints leading deep into the woods. Maybe it’d been gut instinct born from decades of experience. Anyway, he avoided this part of the forest this time of year.

“I’ve got one—no, two questions for you,” I told Peridot.

“Oh? Fire away.”

“Do you think Old Badger ever knew about this field?”

“No. He never went near anything dangerous. If he knew, he would’ve reported it to Master Barque for sure.”

That checks out for the old guy. He must’ve suspected something, but he would’ve let it go if he thought it was dangerous. That careful instinct kept him alive and working as an adventurer until the very end.

I lowered my head in a moment of silence to show my respect, then turned my attention back to the smug bastard standing in front of me.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us about this, then?”

“If I’d been wrong, it obviously would’ve been embarrassing.”

Don’t even pretend you would feel embarrassed like a normal person, you freak.

“Think about it. All I had to go on was a nagging sense of wrongness, a handful of hunches, and some vague suppositions. Who in their right mind would expect to find anything from that?”

“You’re already out of your damn mind, jackass!”

I’d run out of patience dealing with Peridot a long time ago. The only thing that could settle the storm in my gut would be punching this smug, long-haired pretty boy in the face. But this wasn’t the time. I had to hold it in for a while longer.

“So, what’s the deal? I mean, why are they making kids do all the work?” I asked.

“Those children are probably slaves,” Peridot replied. “That plant’s poisonous. Get its sap in your eyes and you’ll go blind. Cut yourself on a leaf and you’re bedridden for two days. Probably fatal for a child.”

“Got it. How do we kill these bastard slavers?” Chikka asked.

She and Sheya were still peeking through the bushes, but I could see the rage in their eyes. They were ready to go, and this was gonna get ugly.

“Heh. You know, if Kiriand had been sold to a slaver, there’s a decent chance he might have ended up here. There’s talk of an abandoned village up past the old road. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids are being forced to do dangerous chemical processing there. Really makes you realize how lucky Kiriand is—another mark in his favor, if you ask me. Good luck is one of the essential traits of a hero.”

Don’t add fuel to the fire, damn it. They’re ready for a massacre without your help.

“That said,” he continued, “I know you’re all fired up already, but let’s make sure we do this right. We capture every one of those scumbags, drag them back to town, and hand them over to the guard. No screwups. No accidents. I want this whole affair wrapped up cleanly and completely without a single stain on our honor. I’m counting on you.”

Peridot—this flashy, smirking weirdo with his bright green hair and annoyingly high-level skill set—only got serious for that last line: “I’m counting on you.”

Then he flashed that same old grin. “We only found this place thanks to what Old Badger left behind. Don’t you think that makes this whole thing his accomplishment?”

Right. You two were close, weren’t you?

At first, Peridot probably had just wanted to check this out because it’d had something to do with Old Badger. Now that the old man was gone, that kid became the missing piece of the puzzle.

Now Peridot can’t let it go. He wants to finish this himself, cleanly and completely without a stain on his honor, just like he said.

“Let’s tell the lord that Old Badger deserves the credit. Our report for Barque will say he was our temporary party leader. Then we’ll have a bard write a ballad so we can talk about the great veteran’s final deed for years to come at every drinking table. Doesn’t that sound like a perfect tribute?”

“Badger wouldn’t want that,” said Sheya.

“Gramps would probably hate it.” Chikka sighed.

I agreed with both of them. The idea was ridiculous.

“That means we must do it,” Dardan countered.

“Indeed,” Corkbliz agreed. “That old man made us buy him drinks all the time. The least he can do is suffer through a little posthumous embarrassment in return.”

The two chuckled like they were already drunk. At the same time, the bird whistle from the woods chirped like it agreed.

“Fine. Why not?” A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth before I even realized it.

“All right, it’s settled. Let’s go. Time to crush this operation!” Peridot’s bright voice was light and free like a seabird soaring over the ocean.

***

What do we do? What should I do? What can I do in this situation?

I already knew the answer.

I was weak. I was a skinny little nine-year-old kid with no strength or skill. I was a rookie who lied about being twelve to register at the guild. The brick shop guy didn’t think I could guard him, and I didn’t think I could keep one of my party members safe from an enemy long enough for her to cast a spell.

I couldn’t beat Waine. I couldn’t even beat Nigu or Hilteeth. Of course I couldn’t—I wasn’t good enough. It was painful and frustrating to think about how much I didn’t have and couldn’t do, and seeing those bizarre sahuagin with their fishy faces and their dirty seaweed-colored spears made my whole body freeze.

There’s only one thing I can do.

I was so weak, it was almost funny. I was so scared, every single part of my body was shaking. Even with luck on my side, there were too many monsters for me to deal with. But I knew what I had to do. I knew how to get Yune safely past that crowd and on that ship.

I bit my lip. Of course I knew. How could I not? What he had done was something I thought about every single day.

Old Badger had used himself as bait to keep those goblins away from me.

I opened my mouth and closed it. It took me two more tries before I could say anything.

“Y-Yune...” My voice shook. “If the sahuagin don’t get in your way, do you think you can climb up that big rock the ship’s leaning on and jump on the deck?”

That question seemed to startle her at first, but then she took a good look at the rock. “There are lots of handholds, so I think I could manage...”

I’d hoped she would say no. I was good at climbing trees, so I could probably get up that rock pretty easily. But I’d thought—I’d hoped—Yune couldn’t.

If she can, then that’s what we have to do.

“Okay. I’ll be the decoy,” I said.

Saying things out loud really did matter. I couldn’t run away, now. I had no choice but to follow through. I was committed.

“Hold on!” said Liluetta. “Kiri—”

“It’s okay. I won’t do anything reckless.” I smiled, and I wondered if it looked real.

I’d meant what I’d said, but I couldn’t avoid danger. Being the decoy meant getting close to the sahuagin. I had to put my life on the line to make this work.

“I’m small, and I look weak. If I get close enough, I think they’ll ignore the sailors and come after me instead.”

On the goblin hunt, I’d followed Sheya’s plan and thrown rocks at the goblins. They had done exactly what she’d expected and charged at me because I looked too weak to be a threat. It was frustrating, but I really was useful as bait.

“Sahuagin are slow on land, right? If I get their attention and stay far enough ahead of them, I should be fine. While they’re distracted, Yune’ll head for the ship. Once she’s up there, she’ll use her healing magic on the injured men and help them escape. After that, we’ll all run away together. Sound good?”

That was my plan, the best answer I could come up with: We can’t beat so many of them in a fight, so we’re not going to fight at all. We don’t have to. This is a rescue mission, and our job is to heal the wounded and get them out safely.

Liluetta looked me in the eye, and I looked right back at her.

She let out a long sigh. “Right. It’s a solid plan.”

She didn’t sound happy about it. Maybe she was even a little frustrated. But she agreed because we didn’t have any better options. There was so little we could do with the skills we had.

“Liluetta, I want you to back us up from as far away as you can. There are a lot of them, and I might not be able to draw them all away. So if Yune needs help getting up that boulder, please support her with your magic.”

“Got it. Leave it to me.”

“If the sahuagin start coming for you instead, just run.”

“In that case, I’ll be a decoy too.” Liluetta stuck out her lower lip a little and gripped her wand.

Her hands were shaking, and I wondered if she’d noticed that none of my smiles had been real.

Then Liluetta turned to Yune. “Are you okay with this? If you want to back out, now’s the time.”

Yune’s voice was hoarse. “I’ll do it. I want to help those men too.”

She was the most important part of this plan. She was the only one who could use healing magic, and climbing that big rock was going to be dangerous because I could only buy her a little time. I could tell she knew that because her face was pale and she looked more nervous now than I’d ever seen.

Honestly, I was worried about Yune. She had the most important and most dangerous part to play. Luring the sahuagin away would put me in danger too, but she had to go right where they were all gathered. And if something happened to her, I would be too far away to help. That was terrifying, but we had to act separately to make our plan work. I had to trust her.

“A-Ah, um... What should I do?!” asked a panicked voice behind us. Our client, the suntanned boy, had a desperate look on his face. “I want to help too! There has to be something I can do!”

“Well...” I understood where he was coming from. Of course he couldn’t just stand there and watch monsters surround his injured crewmates, and I could hear the pain he was feeling just by listening to his voice.

But we couldn’t let him do anything. He didn’t look like he knew how to fight or use magic, and he wasn’t calm enough to be a part of our plan. We were going to do something scary and risky, and we couldn’t protect him on top of that.

“I’m sor—”

“Could you hold on to this for me?” Yune took something solid and heavy off her back and held it out.

It was her pole mace. She was about to head straight into a swarm of monsters, and she was giving him her only weapon.

“It’ll get in the way when I’m climbing. So I’d really appreciate it if you could hold on to it. It’s really important to me. Just be careful not to swing it around, okay?” Yune’s face was still a little pale, but she smiled gently like she always did.

I get that the mace might be hard to climb with, but she’s not taking a weapon with her? And it’s a weapon, something you’re supposed to swing around and smack enemies with, but she said it’s precious to her...

“It’ll be fine. I’ll heal them both and get them back safely. Promise.” She rested her hand on our client’s shoulder to reassure him, then turned back to face me and Liluetta. “Let’s do this. I’m ready to give it my all!”

Yune really did believe in us—in Liluetta...and in me.

I stepped out from behind the rocks. There was no point in hiding now. I was the decoy, and our plan wouldn’t work if they didn’t see me. Then I got a new idea: I bent down and scooped up a handful of gritty sand with pebbles mixed in. But I couldn’t really hold my spear right with only one free hand, so I let part of it rest on my shoulder. This wouldn’t be a problem if I had a one-handed sword like Hilteeth did, but I couldn’t change weapons now.

I started to go up the rocky slope. The ground was slick, uneven, and jagged. I could get really hurt just by falling down. Sahuagin were slow on land, according to Liluetta, but I couldn’t go fast here either. So I carefully picked my way forward.

“Giii!” One of the sahuagin spotted me and made a weird, shrill noise.

Every other monster turned toward me in an instant—not just the ones on land but the ones in the water too.

I froze. All of those fish eyes locked on to me, and I saw nothing but pure killing intent in them. I was terrified, but I forced myself to keep moving. Yune was counting on me. No matter how scared I was, I didn’t want to let her down.

I walked while watching the sahuagin ahead and keeping an eye on the rocky ground. I could see the ocean churning far below me, and I knew one wrong step would send me sliding into the waves. Just picturing that made me tremble.

The closest sahuagin turned to face me and raised its trident, while the others held back. They were still watching me, but only their eyes moved as they glanced between me and the ship. Even the ones in the water stayed put, and the one that had raised its weapon just stood there.

“That’s weird.” I’d thought they would rush me once I got close, but I was wrong. Maybe they figured one was enough to deal with me, except it wasn’t doing anything either. I would have to get closer.

I hopped from one rock to another, being careful not to slip as I approached that one sahuagin. The closer I got, the more alert it became until it took a low stance.

“It’s really big...”

From far away, the sahuagin had looked small. Maybe it was because they hunched over when they were standing. But now that I was so close, I could tell that if this one straightened up, it would be taller than Nigu or Hilteeth—probably as tall as Waine or Peridot. Its wet, scaly body looked tough and hard, and its blank face made it impossible to figure out what it was thinking. The trident it held was aimed at my chest.

I got even closer. Now I could see the jagged points of its teeth in its mouth. That made me pause and hesitate, but I didn’t have time for that. So I moved into its range.

With a whoosh through the air, the sahuagin thrust its trident. I dodged, but the strike had been faster and more precise than I’d expected. A searing pain streaked across my cheek, and I stumbled before jumping back to put some space between us. I shuddered as blood trickled down my face. It didn’t hurt enough to feel like a bad injury, but one mistake and that attack would’ve killed me. My heart was pounding like a drum, and I was covered in sweat as I tried to steady myself.

“I thought they were supposed to be slow on land...” I had to complain because part of me felt like Liluetta had lied, but she wasn’t wrong. The sahuagin didn’t try attacking again, and it wasn’t chasing me.

As I thought about what that meant, I saw the sahuagin step back with a wet splat before slowly getting its trident ready again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another sahuagin sluggishly sliding into the ocean. A new one climbed out of the water to take its place.

That was when it clicked. “They don’t want to be too far from the ocean.”

Their trident thrusts were fast, but otherwise they were slow. And their bodies had to stay moist. If they started drying out, they had to go in the water. So they couldn’t afford to go too far on shore.

These monsters were kind of like praying mantises. Both of them stayed still and waited for prey to come into range before striking to kill in a flash. If they missed, they would just stay put. There was no point chasing what they couldn’t catch.

Maybe sahuagin moved differently underwater, but they knew they were slow on land and adjusted their tactics for that.

I let out a breath. I’m safe once I’m far enough from the ocean. They won’t follow me.

“That’s why I need to do this.” I hopped from one rock to another toward the water, keeping my distance from the sahuagin with the raised trident.

Every sahuagin was watching. Their blank, wet fish eyes staring at me made a shiver run down my spine, and it felt like every hair on my body stood on end.

Three of the sahuagin on land began to move toward me, their webbed feet slapping against the rocks. Most of the ones in the water swam closer and made raspy noises at me. The one who’d attacked me moved slowly into the spot where I’d just been to cut off my retreat.

This was a hunt. The sahuagin were trying to corner me before they went for the kill like wolves surrounding their prey, except these things were a lot slower. They didn’t look very smart either. Even if they were talking to each other with those weird noises, I didn’t think they were saying anything complicated.

Sahuagin were monsters that hunted humans because it was natural to them. I’d thought I could outsmart these fish creatures, but that probably wasn’t going to work because they didn’t waste any time or energy thinking and planning things out.

Another sahuagin came out of the water and started sluggishly closing in on me. The ones on land stood closer to each other to block my retreat.

“Yup. They’re fish,” I muttered.

They were fish no matter how you looked at them. Wide eyes with no emotion, wet and slimy skin that gleamed in the sun, scales too hard for my spear to pierce, gills on their necks, fins along their backs... Those were all fish parts. The more I stared at them, the more I felt like every fish I’d ever seen was just one of these things in disguise. Didn’t the ones we caught the other day look like this?

That meant I was fishing with me as the bait. There were five sahuagin on land now, and I’d hooked four. Most of the ones in the water had gotten closer too. I wanted to lure all of them, but this was the best I could do.

The sahuagin crept toward me.

“I said I wouldn’t do anything reckless.” Here I was, breaking that promise. I hated that, but I had to push myself to be the bait. I had to keep them here until the very end.

I was scared and trembling again. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t.

“Having other people counting on you really makes you wanna act cool, huh.” The words slipped out as a shaky whisper, and I didn’t sound cool at all.

I watched and studied the fish around me while keeping my right hand clenched around the sand I’d picked up earlier.

Not yet. There’s still one that’s too far away.

Not yet. If I move now, they’ll give up and go back.

Not yet. Let them think they’ve won.

The sahuagin settled into a loose circle with me in the middle. Each one held its trident up. Maybe they were being cautious because they knew how slow they were on land. It was only a guess, but I had the feeling they wouldn’t mind if I got away. As long as I didn’t get too close, I was just a threat to chase off and not a target to kill. That was why none of them were attacking.

But once they had me completely and tightly surrounded, they would see that it was better to kill me. I had to get away before that happened. But if I ran too soon, we would be right back where we’d started. So I had to wait until the last possible second, break through their circle, and hopefully make them follow me somewhere else.

I thought about Nigu and Hilteeth then, which was the last thing I wanted to do, but they had taught me what I was about to try. Not that I wanted to act like them, but...

“Make them mad at me. Make them hate me. That’ll make them pay attention to me. That’s when I’ll take one down.”

Is that reckless? Is that even possible? Would my party members, the serious mage and the kind healer, get mad at me for trying?

With wet footsteps, the final sahuagin stepped in to complete the circle around me.

“Now!” I shouted.

Yune ran out from behind the rocks, Liluetta raised her wand and started chanting, and I sprinted for the only gap in the circle of sahuagin surrounding me.

When Chikka had taken us all on that fishing trip, we’d grilled our catches over Sheya’s magical fire and seasoned them with salt before eating them together. That fancy dinner Peridot had treated me to had included fish too. Even the people back in my village caught fish in the river and ate that sometimes.

I ran at the last sahuagin to join the circle. The formation wasn’t complete yet, but the spot it was about to fill was my only chance to get out.

“You’re fish, aren’t you?” I said under my breath. I didn’t think any of them could understand me, but I kept my voice down just in case.

My hand squeezed the sandy gravel I’d scooped up. They were fish, so they weren’t really supposed to be on land. That meant they had to have a weak point here.

The sahuagin saw me coming. It tensed and raised its trident, ready to meet me head-on, and I lifted my hand up and behind me. I already knew the trident’s range from the attack I’d barely dodged, so I stopped just before that and got ready to throw.

I leaned back a little and swung my arm forward. “Hraah!”

They were fish. I’d seen fish so many times, and I knew they didn’t blink or close their eyes because they didn’t have eyelids.

With a face full of sand, the sahuagin hissed and jerked. Its trident clattered on the rocks as it grabbed and rubbed its eyes with both hands while its body writhed in pain.

Nope. You’re not supposed to rub your eyes when you get sand in them. That’s what the village priest always said. Waine too.

I watched it squirm and stumble, then held my spear with both hands close together near the butt end of the shaft. With a deep breath in, I twisted my body and drew my spear back while picturing an attack strong enough to pierce those scales.

“Raaaaah!” I yelled with everything I had, attacked, and...missed.

My yelling had startled the blinded sahuagin, and it had jumped back fast enough to dodge. My attack had barely missed. Something like despair crawled up my back.

No way... It can move like that, even when it’s retreating?

But as the sahuagin landed, its foot slipped on the wet rock. Its knee buckled, and it toppled back into a big gap between some rocks. With two awful-sounding clunks and a huge splash, the monster was gone.

“Yes! One down.” Just like I’d planned. Yep. Exactly what I was going for. I mean, that was the cleanest and fastest way to take one down.

This fisherman I used to know would always say, “If you fall in a crack, no one’s getting you out!” The rocks below us didn’t have a lot of spots to hold on to, and they were too slippery for anyone to climb up on their own. Anyone who tried to help would be wide open and easy prey. In other words, that sahuagin wasn’t coming back up.

That counts as a win, right? Yeah, I’m calling it that.

I bolted through the gap in the sahuagin circle. Yune was already starting to climb the big rock next to the ship. One sahuagin was making its way toward her, but magical light gathered at the tip of Liluetta’s wand.

There were seven sahuagin left. I still couldn’t see any emotions or expressions on their faces, but there was a dark flame burning in their eyes as they looked at me.

“Not yet,” I told myself.

The warm sea breeze carried the cries from the sahuagin in the water. I wiped the blood dripping from my cheek with the back of my hand and felt cold sweat run down my neck.

Not yet. Not until Yune climbs that rock, heals the two men, and helps them escape from the ship. I have to endure those terrifying eyes until then. I can’t run. I can’t let them lose interest in me. Not yet.

I got my spear ready and charged at the nearest sahuagin.

“Oof, oh... Ah!” I made my way up the large boulder next to the ship. I wasn’t sure I would be able to, but it wasn’t too slick or eroded to climb because the waves couldn’t reach this high. There were more than enough cracks and bumps I could use.

I can do this.

“Gii!” A harsh cry rang out. One of the fish monsters hadn’t fallen for Kiri-o’s moves. It had stayed behind and was aiming its trident at me from below.

The barbed, three-pronged head gleamed in the sun. If it pierced my foot, the monster could simply pull me off the boulder and kill me.

“Eep...”

I could imagine it clearly and vividly: my body slammed against the rocks with that terrifying, wet fish monster looming over me, peering at me with soulless, unreadable eyes and opening its mouth filled with sharp, jagged teeth...

The scene in my head paralyzed me. Why am I always like this? Such useless, awful fantasies.

No, this wasn’t the time for that. I had to get to the ship. I had to climb this boulder as fast as I could to reach the people who needed help...and to escape that trident.

But it was too late. The sahuagin lunged. I shut my eyes tight, bracing myself for the pain—

—that never came. Instead, there was a loud bam like an explosion and a guttural scream from the monster.

Then I heard the young lady.

“Yune! Go!”

That sharp and urgent voice I knew so well was the push I needed. I reached up, and my hand squished into something soft on top of the rock. It felt disgusting, and it made my spine crawl, but I held on tight. I clenched my teeth and pulled myself up, toward the people waiting for help.

The magic bullet slammed into the sahuagin and staggered it. As soon as I confirmed that Yune had climbed beyond the reach of its trident, I turned my gaze toward our other teammate without stopping to catch my breath.

“Ugh, I knew he was gonna do that!”

Charging into the group of sahuagin was a terrible idea, but Kiri was dodging their tridents and swinging his spear around. Watching the monsters surround him had been terrifying, but he had broken free. I could tell he was making sure only one of them could attack at a time and being careful to fall back after each of his own strikes.

He was an inexperienced fighter, but his field awareness was surprisingly sharp. Maybe all those days of gathering herbs while staying alert had trained him for this. He was using his head and doing everything he could to avoid getting hit.

Even so, I could hardly bring myself to watch. He must’ve judged he was capable of doing this, or he wouldn’t have gone through with it. But I was the one going out of my mind with anxiety and worry just watching him.

“So much for not being reckless...” I clenched my jaw. That bitter, gnawing feeling in my chest spread and settled in deep.

Kiri had taken one sahuagin down, but that meant nothing to monsters without any sense of loyalty or teamwork. His pattern of engaging one before retreating to a safe distance might not be enough to keep them interested. If he didn’t do something to provoke them, they might head for the ship. That was a very real possibility we had to address. Even if Yune healed those sailors, the three of them would be trapped if the monsters boarded.

That said, Kiri’s actions weren’t pointless. His judgment wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t think the odds of him making it out alive were anywhere near even. At the same time, I couldn’t tell him to stop fighting. I couldn’t tell him to focus on running and playing the decoy. I didn’t have the right to say any of that.

The sahuagin I’d hit with a magic bullet turned toward me, clutching its head. That was fine, because I was on land. From what I’d read about them, and from everything I’d observed so far, I knew I was standing in a safe area. The problem was that I hadn’t taken it down in one shot. How many hits would it take to finish it off? Should I try using another spell to neutralize it? I was still just a fledgling mage, and my arsenal was limited.

As soon as Yune made it to the top of the boulder, she jumped down onto the deck of the ship. That was a relief, but I couldn’t afford to breathe easy just yet. She would need to cast two or three healing spells for the injured men. In the meantime, I had to do something about that.

“Don’t you dare die,” I told Kiri, off in the distance.

I couldn’t cover him. If a few sahuagin broke off and came here, I had no idea whether I’d be able to handle them. It was frustrating, but that was why I couldn’t tell him to stop fighting and run. Sahuagin had low intelligence and unusually high vitality, but they were still low-grade monsters. A decent spellcaster would be able to take care of one in a single hit.

I hated how weak I was.

This was a rescue mission, and that meant the targets’ safety was our priority. Evacuating the crew as quickly as possible would help Kiri the most. I knew that. I did. But...

I focused my awareness into my wand and began my chant. Right now, I had to trust him and do what I could do.

I get it, now. Sahuagin weren’t fighters. They weren’t trained to fight, at least. They didn’t even come close to Waine, and they were even a tier below Nigu and Hilteeth. I had to think of these monsters like wild beasts who happened to have weapons.

“Now!” One of them thrust its trident at me, but I timed my movements just right and avoided its attack.

The sahuagin’s trident was as fast as an arrow shot from a bow, but it moved like an arrow too—straight and predictable. Once I stepped into range, I knew the monster would strike. That made its attack pattern simple to understand and easy to dodge. And, after attacking, the sahuagin’s stance fell apart. Its aim wobbled, its balance faltered, and it left itself wide open. If I moved like that, Waine would chew me out for sure.

“Hup!” I lunged with my spear.

My attack hit somewhere near what might’ve been the base of its neck, near its bulging shoulder, but the point of my weapon just bounced off its scales. I didn’t have enough strength or skill. My cheap spear might’ve been part of the problem too. I could see the scuff mark it left on the monster, but that was all.

Every time I landed a hit and got that same useless result, I felt my frustration build. But, more importantly, I could safely counterattack because the sahuagin left themselves wide open. The fact that I couldn’t do any damage wasn’t a bad thing. If they started to think I was dangerous, they might stop chasing me. They might go to the ship or regroup and intercept me. Then our whole plan would fall apart.

As much as it stings, this is fine. I told myself that, pulled my spear back, and put some space between us.

I get it, now. I knew what distance I needed to maintain—I always stopped about two steps outside their reach. If I pulled back too much, they wouldn’t follow. They were slow on land, so two steps was all I needed.

I get it. I learned that sahuagin avoided big gaps between rocks. They were really bad at jumping. I had to pay attention to our surroundings.

I get it. I noticed one of them trying to move around me and cut off my escape. But from what I now knew about their speed on land, Yune would already be getting off the ship with the healed crew members before that sahuagin could get into position.

I get it. I heard two sahuagin making those harsh, grating noises and saw them gesturing with their hands and arms, and I could tell they were giving orders. The other five on land were quiet.

I get it. When sahuagin thrust their tridents, their gills clamped shut. And because of their natural hunch and the way they leaned so far forward to attack, they left themselves wide open. I couldn’t take advantage of that, though, because their soft underbellies stayed hidden. Even when they were off-balance, I couldn’t reach.

But I get it, now. I memorized the timing between their attacks and how long it took for them to recover their stance.

I get it.

I get it.

I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it!

It was the first time I’d ever felt my brain working so fast. I was struggling to process that, but I stepped forward anyway. I was right on the edge of their range, this time.

A trident flew at me, and I dodged. Another sahuagin came from the side. I saw it, twisted my body, and dodged again. I felt its trident graze my leather armor, and I felt a chill. But since I was so close...

“Haaah!” I raised my spear like a sword and brought it down with everything I had.

If I couldn’t hit its belly because it was so hunched forward, then I’d go for the head. Even if I couldn’t land a clean blow, I thought I could maybe knock it off-balance and even smash it to the ground if I slammed my spear down hard enough.

But the sahuagin’s tough back fin blocked my spear.

“Oh, come on!” I groaned.

The sahuagin swung its trident. Instead of a thrust, it swept low like it was trying to trip me.

I hadn’t seen that move before. But it wasn’t fast at all, so I jumped back to avoid it and put some space between us.

And I hadn’t expected the fin to be so hard. With my strength, my spear was too light to do any damage. If I had a sword—or better yet—an axe or heavy hunting knife, maybe I could’ve landed a real hit.

“Well, a spear’s all I have. So...”

My thoughts were racing. I can probably pierce its eyes, but the target’s too small. Someone like Waine can do it, but I don’t trust myself. What about the mouth? It’s big and always opening and closing. But it’ll be too low to the ground after the fish attacks. I would have to aim from under like I’m scooping up with my spear. I don’t know how to do that, and I never practiced anything like it. Even if I pull it off, would my spear even go deep enough? Maybe not. But just scaring the fish might be enough.

No, wait. I should aim for the gills. They’re probably soft inside, so stabbing my spear in could take the fish down in one hit. Chikka does that with fish she catches, and it’s a pretty big target on these monsters. The problem is, I have to get even closer—

Something cold and slick touched my right ankle. A sharp and sudden tug dragged me sideways, and my body went crashing down on the jagged rocks before I could figure out what had happened.

My knee slammed hard into the ground, and pain shot up and down my leg. My jaw hit solid rock, and my skull rattled with the impact. I reached out to grab onto something, anything, but all I got was a patch of barnacle-covered rock. Pain tore through my palm as it split open.

My head spun, but I somehow managed to turn and look behind me. A webbed hand sticking out from between the rocks had a solid grip on my ankle. And just beyond that was a fish’s face. Something was leaking from the side of its head like it was injured. A dark, terrifying fury burned in its eyes as it stared straight at me.

I recognized this one. It was hard to tell one sahuagin from another, but this was the one I’d taken down earlier. It had to be, but how? I was so sure there was no way it could get back up after falling all the way down. It didn’t make sense. No one could climb wet, jagged rocks like these. So how...

“Because it’s a monster.”

Maybe its body was built differently. Maybe it had some special ability. Whatever the reason, sahuagin could climb wet rocks, and that wasn’t fair.

I heard wet footsteps and saw webbed feet in front of me. I looked up, and another sahuagin was looming over me with its trident up in the air. Its cold, unreadable fish eyes seemed like they were laughing at me.

The sahuagin behind me yanked my leg again while the one in front slowly lowered its trident. I had two choices: get dragged into the crack between the rocks or be skewered like a fish on a stick—

“Close your eyes!”

The blinding flash was so intense, it turned my vision white even with my eyes closed.

Sahuagin were fish. Even if they could understand our words, they didn’t have eyelids to close their eyes. So that light scorched the sahuagin’s eyes. They howled in pain and covered their faces with both hands, letting their tridents clatter on the ground. The hand gripping my leg released me and vanished into the gap between the rocks.

I was still in a daze, but I pushed myself up. I grabbed my spear, threw both of my arms up to protect my head, crouched low, and ran. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything other than scramble the hell out of there.

“Hurry!” Liluetta shouted. She looked pale and furious at the same time, and her wand was raised and ready.

“Kiri-o!” Yune was running toward me with her mace in hand.

Behind her were the tanned boy and the two other crew members, with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders for support. I glanced back nervously. The sahuagin were still writhing from the flash and clutching their faces in agony. None of them were coming after us.

Yune dropped her mace, threw her arms around me, and hugged me with all her strength. Over her shoulder, I saw Liluetta running toward us too. That was when it finally sank in.

We did it. We completed the job.

***

“Let me get this straight.” Barque put his elbow on the reception counter and pressed his hand to his forehead after listening to our report. His expression was grim, and deep furrows creased between his brows. “At least fifteen sahuagin were surroundin’ the boat, and you fought your way through to rescue the wounded. That’s what you’re tellin’ me?”

I nodded, but his summary wasn’t completely right. “It wasn’t a proper fight, and we didn’t fight all of them, but that’s the gist.”

Barque’s face twisted like he’d eaten something sour. After a long silence, he muttered, “You see a mess like that, you’re supposed to turn tail and come back.”

Isn’t that a bit much? I mean... “Hang on,” I protested. “You’re the one who told us to go in the first place.”

Barque let out a long sigh. The color had drained from his face, and he looked exhausted. “Yeah, I did. You’re right. But I wasn’t expectin’ a situation like that. Sahuagin stick to the ocean. They’re vicious and relentless, but I’ve never heard of ’em obsessin’ over prey on land. Hell, even bein’ out of the water is rare for those things.”

“What?!” I blurted.

There’d been so many of them swapping in and out, surrounding us and coordinating their attacks like a hunt. But Barque was saying it was rare for them to leave the water? That didn’t make any sense. I glanced at Liluetta and saw that she looked just as surprised as I felt. Apparently, this was news to her too.

What did it mean? I didn’t think Barque was wrong. As the leader of the adventurer’s guild in Hiriyenka, a port town, he must’ve handled tons of sahuagin-related requests and heard just as many reports from adventurers. He probably knew more about monsters than any book.

“Normally, there’s no fight at all. You might get a few persistent ones hangin’ around, but even then they’ll just watch from the water. At most, one or two might attack. They’re slow as hell on land, so I figured you guys could handle that.”

Five of them had come up on land, and four more came from the ocean. If five was already odd, then nine was completely messed up. In other words, the request was supposed to be a lot less dangerous. Like, any party with a healer would’ve been fine—that was probably what Barque had thought and why he’d told us to go.

“Ah, damn it. No, I mean, sorry. The guild made a mistake. We should’ve foreseen what kind of situation you were walkin’ into.”

He’s calling it a mistake. Even though we completed the request, rescued those men, and made it back alive...

“There will be times when the guild can’t get an accurate read on a situation. It happens. Especially with urgent requests. When what you see doesn’t match what you’re told, you’re allowed to withdraw with no penalty for breach of contract. And it won’t affect your reputation. Think of comin’ back and reportin’ what you saw as part of the job.”

“B-But...!” Yune spoke up loudly, but Barque’s sharp glare made her falter. When she found her words again, her voice was barely above a whisper. “People were hurt. One of them had a head injury, and so much time had already passed...”

“So what? If they die, they die.” The guild leader’s response was harsh but full of feeling and intensity.

He pulled a cloth pouch out from a drawer, loosened the tie, and dumped what was inside onto the counter. There were a few silver and copper coins, about the same amount we’d received for the brick shop and haunted mansion requests—Rank F jobs with Rank F rewards.

“This is what that lad handed over for payment. No clue if it’s all he’s got as an apprentice, or if he collected it from the other sailors. Either way, the guild takes a cut from this. Your pay will be even less. But you should already know that’s the going rate for work passed down to a Rank F party.”

There had been other adventurers at the guild when the request had come in. No healers, maybe, but there were stronger people who were more capable than us. We’d been picked because the job didn’t seem all that dangerous, because Yune was with us, and because the client could only afford to hire a low-ranking party.

Barque’s gaze landed on Liluetta. “Magnan, would you say that’s a price worth riskin’ your life over?”

Liluetta examined the silver and copper coins on the counter with the knowledge she had as the daughter of a merchant family. Then she turned to look at Yune and me. “No. Nowhere near enough.”

“Exactly,” said Barque.

I couldn’t say a word.

Helping people had felt like the right thing to do, but now we were being scolded because we’d risked our lives. I really had almost died, and Yune had been in danger too. Looking at the coins on the counter, we could see exactly how our reward compared to the risk.

“Bein’ an adventurer isn’t charity work. If the reward’s too low, don’t risk your life. If someone’s got a problem with that, tough. Tell it to ’em straight. ‘If you want someone to put their life on the line, then pay up.’ And no matter how much money they offer, no matter what reason they give, just walk away if you think it’s not worth it. People around here say, ‘Monsters don’t kill adventurers. Requests do.’”

I’d never heard that before, but I understood what it meant after almost dying today. Clients had to put a price tag on the person they wanted to save, and adventurers had to do the same for themselves. For monster exterminations, there was a price for killing a living creature too.

That’s what it means to know how much a life is worth.

“Let me be blunt,” said Barque. “Listen, this guild doesn’t expect much from Rank Fs like you.”

We were in the lowest tier of the guild, and we didn’t get high-paying jobs because those were difficult. Earning what that little cloth pouch had held was good enough for a Rank F party, and anything beyond that was too much. It made sense to me. We weren’t supposed to take on more than we could handle. The guild wanted jobs completed, not botched, so they wouldn’t ask us to do something we weren’t capable of.

“Well, I do expect a bit more from your party.” Barque closed his eyes, let out a long breath, and opened his eyes again to look at each of us.

I assumed I’d heard him wrong at first, because no one had ever said something like that to us before, and because the way he was eyeing us made me feel like he was watching a bunch of weird animals do tricks.

“Not great in a fight but good heads on your shoulders,” he said. “Resourceful and serious when it comes to requests. Not like the usual riffraff. From the guild’s point of view, that makes you three more useful than muscleheads who only know how to swing a sword.”

Useful... I thought about that word.

“That’s why you have to learn how to walk away. No need to do jobs that don’t match your strengths.”

I bit my lip and swallowed those words like bitter medicine. Peridot had said, “Make your party shine.” That meant playing to our strengths. The words were different, but the message was the same: Do what you’re good at, and don’t do what you’re not.

That last fight had been more than we could handle. We’d gotten lucky with our decoy strategy, and I didn’t even really take a single sahuagin down. Fighting them head-on would’ve been impossible. Confronting them at all had been dangerous and reckless. Anyone else in our situation would’ve backed out.

I knew all of that was true, but I still had to ask, “What we did... Was it a mistake?”

I understood what Barque was telling us. I had seen our reward, weighed it against my life and Yune’s, and realized it wasn’t even close to even. But a part of me still couldn’t accept it.

“You nearly died, didn’t you?” Barque asked.

“I made it back alive.” I wanted him to understand that surviving had been a real possibility.

“A result you only got because you were lucky this time.”

“But it was the best possible result.”

Liluetta looked at me like she wanted to say something. Yune’s lips were pressed together like she didn’t know how to respond.

“Don’t get cocky because it happened to work out one time.” Barque’s voice flared with anger. “If you go chasin’ that one success out of ten, you’re turnin’ a blind eye to the nine where it goes wrong. That’s irresponsible.”

“People were in danger. Time was running out. We were the only ones there,” I argued.

I wasn’t looking for praise, but I wasn’t happy with what we were getting. The sahuagin had been terrifying, and I might not be standing here if Liluetta hadn’t saved me, so I did understand where Barque was coming from. But being scolded for saving people felt wrong.

“Hellooo! Sounds like an interesting conversation you’re having. Heh. Why don’t I hand down the verdict?”

Barque and I both made a face as soon as we heard that bright, sparkly voice, because we knew trouble had arrived.

“We’re in the middle of somethin’,” said Barque. “Go bother someone else, Peridot.”

Peridot chuckled and shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, for I have a report to make myself. Everyone will be terribly cross if I don’t take care of it quickly, but cutting in line would be rather uncouth. The only sensible option is to swiftly settle your little dispute while I wait my turn.”

“Uh-huh. If we ignore the part where you’re bargin’ into a serious conversation and makin’ everything more complicated, you’ll hear no complaints from me.”

“You flatter me, Master Barque. Very well, leave it to me. I’ll resolve this matter more fairly than the scales of the god of judgment.”

Wow. It’s hard to call this a real conversation. They’re not even on the same page with their emotions. Barque’s really angry, and Peridot’s smiling at him so happily. I’ve seen cats communicate better. Maybe I should say something...

“Um, Peridot, weren’t you going to check on the nacturus?” I asked.

“Hmm? Ah, yes. Had a little slipup and ended up with a bit of bonus work. Oh, by the way, the nacturus is in bloom. Tomorrow should be a good day for harvesting.”

“Really? Thank you. Wait, you said you had a slipup. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, yes, but we ran out of rope.”

Rope was a basic adventuring tool. I was hoping to get some for myself soon. It was really useful for reaching herbs growing on steep cliffs or slopes, but I couldn’t think of a job that needed so much rope that it was possible to run out. Maybe he meant that he left his rope at home. That’s not a big deal, then. I’m sure nobody got hurt or anything.

“Everyone gave me an earful, of course. To be fair, they had a point. I should have realized how much we would require and brought extra. Which is why, after a breezy gallop with my trusty Mercetino, I came back here to pick up more rope and deliver our report! Ah, what a refreshing ride! Nothing like a dependable steed, don’t you think?”

Man, this guy is always having a good time.

“I really must hurry back to not keep everyone waiting, but your argument is taking ages. Ahh, if there were more staff here, I wouldn’t have to butt in like this. Isn’t this lack of workers the guild’s fault?”

Barque clicked his tongue.

He seems pretty unhappy about what Peridot said, but it would be nice to have more staff at the reception counter. The line of adventurers waiting to take requests is pretty long most mornings.

“Heh, sounds like I have Master Barque’s consent! Very well, allow me to offer my thoughts...” Peridot paused for a moment. “This situation is quite fascinating, isn’t it? I wonder, would it fall under philosophy or theology? I would like to pose the following question to the church the next time I go: Life is precious, and saving others is a noble act, but what about risking your own life to save someone else—is that truly right?”

He said it like a riddle, but to me it sounded like a contradiction. A life is a life, whether it belongs to me or someone else. I didn’t make myself a decoy because I wanted to die. I did it because I thought I could do it without dying. It was a close call, but here I am.

“It’s an interesting question,” said Peridot, “but it’s not really useful, is it? A discussion about a quandary like that is better over tea and biscuits during some lazy afternoon. As adventurers, we don’t need to worry about right or wrong in the moment. Talking about morals and ethics just gets in the way.”

“Gets in the way,” huh. He says that like right and wrong or good and evil have nothing to do with adventurers.

“Let’s set aside those boring moral arguments and settle this. Barque is wrong, because Kiriand and his party don’t deserve to be blamed for anything.” Peridot said that with a smile on his face. His words were blunt but as light as a breeze.

“You little...”

“Come, Master Barque. You’re the head of an adventurer’s guild. Offering advice to rookies is fine, and so is scolding them. But you shouldn’t let your feelings get in the way. Favoritism is unbecoming.”

“Huh?” I said. That word caught me off guard. I wasn’t even sure if I’d heard it right. I definitely didn’t feel like we were getting any special treatment.

“I wasn’t playing favorites,” Barque muttered. “The guild messed up.”

“But you do realize you went a little overboard, don’t you? Getting so worked up with that long lecture... Wouldn’t you normally just tell them adventurers are responsible for their own actions and leave it at that?”

Barque clicked his tongue and looked away.

What Peridot had said did sound more like Barque. The fact that he hadn’t just told us that and sent us away probably meant he felt responsible for sending us on a job that was too difficult. I wasn’t sure if that was favoritism, but he really had treated us differently this time.

“Exactly. Adventurers are responsible for our own actions. We’re free to make our own choices. That’s why Kiriand and the others don’t deserve blame. Adventurers should be free.” Peridot smiled at us.

Then his words turned into something like a song, and his voice was more poetic than any bard’s.

“Your enemy was powerful, and the lives at risk were precious. You had everything to lose and little to gain, but your souls called out to you on the battlefield. Why should you hold back? We are adventurers. Instinct drives us to the edge. Better to die free than live chained. I will not blame you for your admirable choices. No, I will sing your praises and applaud your actions. But you can rest assured, for I promise to laugh at your expense if you act recklessly and die.”

Peridot, the Bearer of the Radiant Sun, was someone who could say all of that for our sakes and mean every word.

“You’ve got a hell of a personality.” Liluetta was clearly unimpressed, and caution flashed across her face.

Yune didn’t say anything, but she had the same wary expression.

I understood why. Peridot was different in every way. Something about his core was nothing like the rest of us. Every single part of him stood for what he believed in.

“I am an adventurer, after all. That’s what gives me my winning personality.” Peridot’s response to Liluetta was like a soft breeze rustling through leaves. “You’re still new, so you probably don’t know this yet. Once you’re strong enough to build a reputation like Seabird Tempest’s, you start getting a lot more personal requests.”

“Are you bragging right now?” Liluetta asked.

“A bit of self-deprecation,” Peridot replied. “Those requests will sound like this: ‘A bunch of powerful monsters showed up, and people got trapped in a collapsing mine shaft. Please go rescue them,’ or ‘A ship went missing near a sea dragon’s nest. Please go find it,’ or ‘A village’s been overrun by undead. Can you go look for survivors?’ All of them will be insanely dangerous jobs that come out of nowhere, the kind where the client’s begging you to just go take a look because you’re strong and they’re weak and helpless and can only offer you spare change. If you turn it down, you’re the bad guy. They’re the ones asking for something impossible, but they act like you’ve done something horrible to them by saying no.”

Just imagining it sent a chill down my spine. Even for a party with a leader as strong as Peridot and members as skilled as Teteni, there was a limit to what they could do.

“But there are adventurers who accept those jobs. They say things like, ‘They were so desperate, I just couldn’t say no. And I’ve got a plan, so I think I can make it work.’ Then they die. Do you know what people call those dead adventurers? Saints. Heroes. Champions. ‘They were so noble. Such good people,’ they say, crying and thanking the dead. People might even remember those adventurers’ names for a little while, without ever having known who they really were.”

There was no anger in Peridot’s voice or expression. He just smiled like it was the only right thing to do.

“Kiriand,” he said, “one day, you’ll become a hero like that.”

From Peridot, my death sentence sounded like a line of poetry.

“Adventurers should be free. You should follow your heart wherever it leads you on your journey. But don’t you worry. If you die, and if people turn you into a hollow image, I’ll remember you as you truly were and make fun of you for it.” He winked at me.

I couldn’t say anything to this man, who I thought was everything an adventurer should be.

I couldn’t say I’d never admired heroes in stories I’d read, because that would be a lie. But those characters belonged to another world. They were too different from me and the people I knew, and I never imagined or even dreamed I could become someone like that. I just kind of thought they were cool.

A hero is a strong and righteous person who accomplishes great things, and I never, ever want to be one. Righteousness, virtue, even the sacred teachings that say life is precious... None of those things protect us as adventurers. An adventurer is a person who weighs their own precious life against coin—someone who’s doing it wrong from the start—and that’s why clients don’t value our lives.

Clients make impossible requests, get mad if we refuse, and take no responsibility when we die. With words like brave and noble, they make us into beautiful, empty illusions of justice and righteousness in order to avoid the truth—that their request killed us.

And that’s how heroes are made.

“The sahuagin did behave very strangely,” said Peridot. “I’ve fought them, but I can’t remember ever seeing any come on land.”

He seemed to be done talking to us. His curiosity had flowed like running water to something else that caught his interest.

Barque sighed and nodded. “I’ll admit, it’s weird. But unlike some people, these kids don’t exaggerate. Might be worth gettin’ a full account from the sailors, just in case.”

“Firsthand testimony is important. I’m sure there were things these rookies didn’t catch. The captain should definitely be questioned. Are there really people who exaggerate on their reports, by the way? That’s bad behavior. Poorly done. Very irresponsible.”

“I’m talkin’ about you, dumbass.”

The adults were having a more productive discussion now. If something like this happened again, they would need to be ready. The first step was figuring out why the sahuagin had attacked. Doing that was way more important than talking about how some Rank F adventurers had acted.

I let out a long breath as the tension finally started to leave my shoulders.

“U-Um, Kiri-o? Are you okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sorry, Yune. I’m fine now.”

Both Liluetta and Yune were watching me closely and anxiously.

How long have they been looking at me like that? What kind of face am I making? I’m making them worry. Knowing that made me uncomfortable, and I turned away from them.

“Let’s go sit down,” Liluetta said, tugging lightly on my sleeve and pointing toward an empty table.

Liluetta’s trying to look out for me... She probably thinks I’m about to fall apart.

Peridot and Barque were still having a discussion.

“Hmm, yes. Perhaps the fishing boat did something to provoke the sahuagin. Maybe they caught one in their nets?”

“Nope. The kid said they cut the nets right after the attack started.”

“Then that’s not it. Could they have stolen prey or something?”

“I’m tellin’ you, they got rid of the nets. Even if the sahuagin were pissed, chasin’ the crew to shore like that doesn’t make sense.”

The adults weren’t looking at us anymore. We weren’t needed for conversations about why and what now, and there was nothing more we could do.

When had Peridot started listening to our conversation anyway? If he’d heard all the stuff about the sahuagin, maybe he’d been behind us the whole time. The highest-ranking adventurer in the guild patiently lining up behind bottom-of-the-barrel adventurers like us made me feel guilty, especially since he’d said his team was waiting for him.

“Hmm... Was a sea demon king born or something? That would explain why the sahuagin are more aggressive.”

“That’s just a fairy tale. Besides, this group was only around fifteen strong. Way too small a force for a king to be commanding.”

“True, a bit on the underwhelming side. Hmm... Oh! Maybe the merfolk would know something. Master Barque, do you have any connections?”

“I do. Just recently, a party called Seabird Tempest or whatever got help from a mermaid to infiltrate a gambling ship.”

“Heh. People sure are forgetful creatures! I don’t recall any of that. But I bet you took notes on that rookie sailor’s story to help you remember all the details. Mind letting me take a peek?”

Their chat sounded casual, but I knew that meant they would figure something out. They were calm, but they weren’t holding back. They were coming up with ideas I never would’ve imagined. There really was nothing more we could do. We would only get in the way if we tried to get involved again.

“All right, let’s sit down,” I said. “We can get our reward later.”

I nodded to Liluetta, who was still tugging at my sleeve. Both girls looked relieved and smiled at me.

The coins were still sitting on the counter. The guild hadn’t taken its cut yet, so we couldn’t just walk off with them. I decided to come back after Peridot left.

Barque pulled out a sheet of parchment from a stack and glanced over it. “I didn’t write anythin’ special in my notes. Let’s see, what haven’t we talked about yet... The attack happened near a crescent-shaped island southwest of here. No residents.”

“What?!” For some reason, Peridot’s reaction was a little over-the-top.

“Peridot?”

“Ah, no, I mean, d-did you say a crescent-shaped island southwest of here? Ah ha, well, yes, I guess that area would have a lot of fish. Probably good for fishing!”

“Oh? Sounds like you know a lot about this particular island,” said Barque, and the mood changed right away. “What is it, leader of Seabird Tempest? Got somethin’ on your mind? Somethin’ shady? Are you tellin’ me the man they call Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun, is the kind of coward who thinks it’s fine to cover his messes up and pretend nothin’ happened? You screwed up again, didn’t you.”

“W-Well, during that gambling ship assignment, we may have found some suspicious white powder on one of the nearby islands, and, uh, ended up holding a contest to see who could throw it the farthest...”

Barque grabbed Peridot’s collar. “YOU THREW THAT CRAP INTO THE OCEAN?!”

Peridot was sweating and avoiding Barque’s glare like a guilty kid. “I mean, we would’ve inhaled the smoke if we’d burned it.”

Suspicious white powder? That sounds pretty bad.

“So you’re sayin’ those sahuagin got high off their gills and went on a rampage.”

“Hmm, it’s been a few days, so I think the more likely scenario is that they got addicted. Then withdrawal symptoms made them attack the ship to find more of the stuff.”

“That’s worse! If they’re addicts, it’s gonna happen again!”

I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. What does “high off their gills” and “withdrawal” mean?

Liluetta and Yune both looked shocked, so they probably knew what was going on. I decided to try asking them.

“Hey, this suspicious white powder—”

“K-Kiri-o! Say, aren’t you hungry? Why don’t we go find something tasty to eat?” Yune asked all of a sudden.

“Great idea. But I’d rather not have fish today,” said Liluetta.

I had to agree with her. I was hungry, but thinking about sahuagin faces kind of ruined the idea of eating fish.

“Master Barque, please, just hear me out.”

“What?”

“There is no proof.”

The two adults’ voices faded into the background as we made our way to the tavern part of the guild. I still had questions, but I couldn’t really stick around because Liluetta and Yune were both tugging on my sleeves.

“I see. Listen, Peridot.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t dodge.”

“Yes, sir.”

The whack I heard behind us was so loud, I ducked before I realized nobody was attacking us. But I was too scared to turn around and see what had happened.

Chapter 5: A Good Turning Point

Peridot was unconscious until around dusk. When he woke up, he jumped onto Mercetino’s back in a hurry and rode off. The city gates closed at sundown, and neither Peridot nor Waine’s group came back that night.

Liluetta and Yune had already left, and Nigu and Hilteeth were still out on their goblin hunt. I was standing in the dark with my spear and staring up at the moon. I hadn’t had such a quiet night in a long time.

As soon as I thought that, I heard a loud commotion from the guild. That made me chuckle. Even without those noisy guys around, it was still lively.

Since I didn’t have a training partner tonight, all I could do was go through the motions. Instead of using my usual practice stick, I held my spear under the moonlight and faced off against the night.

I tried to picture the sahuagin I’d fought today, but the blurry image in my mind quickly faded away. I shifted my focus and tried to think of Waine’s form in the darkness, but that vanished too. I even tried imagining Nigu and Hilteeth, which was no good.

Something felt wrong, and that feeling clung to me.

Sahuagin weren’t strong on land. They were pretty big, and their lunges were fast, but they were slow and their attacks were predictable. I was pretty sure I could’ve taken one down if it’d been the only one there, but I would probably never be in a fight like that again.

Waine always made time to train with me, so there was no reason to push myself tonight. I would be better off learning from him tomorrow or the day after, and I could probably spar with Nigu and Hilteeth anytime. I did want to beat them someday, so thinking through how I would fight them wasn’t a waste of time. But I wasn’t in the mood.

The opponent in the darkness before my eyes wasn’t any of them.

“You should try aiming for me.”

I lunged and thrust my spear. Its point cut through my hazy mental image and blew it away. But beating him wasn’t supposed to be so easy.

“Aim for him, huh?” I murmured. Then I looked around, and I was relieved that no one had heard me.

He was a weirdo and a mess. I had no doubt about that. And I was pretty sure he was more of a monster than the monsters themselves.

“Adventurers are free.” My words came out more clearly than before, but they weren’t true. Becoming an adventurer didn’t make you free. That would be too convenient. It just made you give up the things that used to protect you. We were still tied down by all kinds of restraints, and that wasn’t real freedom. But...

“If I don’t just aim for him... What if I surpass—”

The rest of that sentence caught in my throat. That would mean becoming the best in this guild, but I was still at the very bottom. I frowned, shook my head hard, and felt my cheeks burn.

With nothing but darkness and silence around me, I started swinging my spear.

***

“I am not okay with this.” Liluetta was in a bad mood. With her cheeks puffed out and lips pursed, she stomped down the stone-paved street.

“Now, now, my lady. Isn’t this a good thing?” Yune, on the other hand, was smiling and even more relaxed than usual. Her basket, like Liluetta’s, was already more than half full of nacturus roots.

“This herb is the second-most valuable one on the permanent request,” I said.

After Peridot had told us nacturus was ready to harvest, we’d set out first thing in the morning to forage. Now we were on our way back to the guild. The bottom half of my basket was full of nacturus too. On top of that, we’d picked up a handful of other herbs along the way.

“No matter how I add it up, we’ll make more today than we did over the last three days. And it’s not even evening! Ugh!” said Liluetta. She still sounded angry.

Nacturus didn’t grow in dense clusters like the purple flowers in mana pools. Instead, it grew scattered over a wide area. That meant we couldn’t harvest much, so none of our baskets were full. But what we had was enough. It was so valuable, even a modest haul would give us a hefty payout. Like Liluetta had said, it was probably more than what we’d earned over the past three days combined.

“It really is rare. Today was my first time seeing this herb,” I said.

“I know all of that! But I’m still not okay with it!” Liluetta complained.

I did get where she was coming from. Today had been too easy. We’d gone out, looked around, picked some herbs, and headed back. The old road was overgrown but still easy to walk on, plus we hadn’t gone too deep into the forest. And, of course, there hadn’t been a single fight. We’d even wrapped up early after deciding we’d gathered enough. It was honestly a relaxing day.

“By the way,” Yune chimed in, “I guess not all valuable herbs grow near mana pools, huh?”

That had crossed my mind too. Herbs worth a lot of money always made me think of mana pools, but nacturus was different.

“All kinds of materials are used in magia and alchemy,” Liluetta explained, “not just ones rich in magical energy. In fact, if that’s all you need, you can often substitute something else. The ingredients that really fetch a high price can’t be switched out like that. They’re hard to get too. My guess is, this herb usually only grows deep in the forest where it’s difficult to find.”

She knew a lot as a mage, and what she said made perfect sense. Nacturus was worth more than the mana pools’ purple flowers, so it had to be one of those rare ingredients with no substitutes.

But I still liked gathering the purple flowers more. Nacturus didn’t grow in clusters, so we had to wander around a lot. That meant we couldn’t gather too much, so our reward at the end of the day could end up being less than what we would get from a mana pool. Maybe we could’ve found more today if we’d kept looking, but I’d heard harvesting too much would stop it from growing back next year. So we’d probably stopped at the right time.

“Haah... What you’re saying is, we should stick to easy jobs and head to one of your gathering spots once in a while?” Liluetta asked.

“Pretty much. Oh, but I wouldn’t mind taking the herb-gathering request as one of our easy jobs sometimes.”

“Kiri-o really does like foraging!” said Yune. “I still want to take on healing jobs. Just, um, ones that don’t involve nearly dying like yesterday, please?”

As we walked down the road, we chatted about how we would make money from now on. Liluetta’s magic was dependable, and Yune had treated those injured fishermen without a hitch. With the two of them, we could handle work that most adventurers couldn’t. If we also used the gathering spots Old Badger had told me about, we’d probably bring in some good coin. That wouldn’t be bad at all. It was really promising, actually. For the first time, I felt like we had a plan.

“Hey, Kiri. Today is the day we move into the inn Teteni showed us,” Liluetta said as we got close to the guild.

That was the real reason we’d wrapped up early today. I’d suggested stopping because I didn’t want to pick too much nacturus, but we could’ve kept going and picked regular herbs. We had other stuff to do here in town, though.

“What about you?” she asked, and Yune looked at me too.

“I’ve been thinking it might be about time,” I replied.

I was probably the weakest person in the whole guild. I’d made dangerous mistakes and poor decisions, but I felt like I could see a path forward now. I knew what to do, but it was hard not to hesitate. I’d gotten used to where I was, and going somewhere new felt a little scary. Even so, I already knew where I was headed.

Before I could say anything else, we’d arrived at the guild. It was quiet after lunchtime, and Barque was the only person inside.

“You three again,” he said.

“Would you check our herbs, Barque?” Liluetta asked.

“Yeah, I’m free.”

We handed our baskets over. We’d already told him what we would be gathering before we’d left, so he didn’t seem surprised by what we’d brought in. Still, he took his time examining each herb—maybe because they were extra valuable—and he didn’t seem like he was still hung up on what had happened yesterday.

While he worked, I looked around the empty guild. “Looks like Waine and the others aren’t around.”

“They’re probably sleeping,” Liluetta said.

“They did seem really tired,” Yune added.

Waine, Sheya, and Chikka had returned to the guild first thing this morning looking totally drained. They hadn’t said much about what had happened, but apparently they’d stayed up all night keeping watch over something. I had no idea what kind of gathering job required overnight guard duty, but higher-ranked adventurers probably had their own chaos to deal with.

That said, Peridot had looked totally fine. He’d come in and gone right back out again with Teteni, a burly dwarf, and a tall and thin cleric. All of them were full of energy and noisy so early in the morning. Apparently, they’d gone to deliver a report to the lord.

That was kind of a shame. I’d been hoping to talk to Waine, but I wasn’t going to wake him up just for that.

Oh well, I guess it’s just a matter of making my own decision.

“All right.” Barque packed a bunch of coins into a heavy cloth pouch and dropped it on the counter with a solid thud. “Everything checks out. Here’s your pay.”

“Whoa,” I whispered.

There was something really satisfying about how heavy that pouch was. When I snuck a glance at Liluetta, who’d been grumbling about this job, her face looked a lot more relaxed. Yune looked really happy, of course. But surprise flashed across their faces as Barque placed a second pouch next to the first.

“Your bonus from yesterday,” he added.

It wasn’t as heavy as the first pouch, but it still seemed hefty.

“The captain of that fishin’ boat came by and left it for you. Told me to make sure you got it. That boat was big for just a three-man crew, right? Anything goin’ offshore needs to be big enough to stand up to waves and monsters. Havin’ a ship like that means they’re skilled and make good money, and stiffin’ the people who helped them would be bad for their reputation.”

I get it now. Righteousness, virtue, even the sacred teachings that say life is precious... None of those things protect us as adventurers. That’s why clients don’t value our lives. And if we die, they’re not responsible.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate us.

I felt happiness growing inside me, but it was all too sudden for me to process.

“This doesn’t happen often,” Barque said, watching us, “but it does sometimes. Also, keep this with you. It’ll at least serve as proof of who you are.” He slid something else across the counter.

There were three small metal plates, one for each of us, with “The Raging Kelpie’s Tail” engraved on them. These were guild licenses.

“Technically, the guild doesn’t even have a Rank F,” Barque explained. “Newbies with no skill and no track record aren’t official members. We take ’em in as trainees and give ’em small jobs to cut their teeth. Rank F’s just somethin’ we say for convenience.”

I heard what he was saying, but I didn’t really understand yet.

“In other words, your formal registration—becoming Rank E—is at the guild’s discretion. The three of you aren’t strong enough yet, but the guild and Peridot screwed up this time. To make up for that, we’re sayin’ your performance earned you a proper rank. I’ll go ahead and submit your registration.” The tone of his voice was so dry, he sounded like he was reading a shipping invoice to us.

Liluetta, Yune, and I looked at each other. None of us knew how to react. The fact that Rank F wasn’t real didn’t surprise me—they did let me join without a test or anything. So I knew nobody thought of us as full-fledged adventurers.

But Rank E? A real license? I’d assumed we wouldn’t earn that until much, much later. I’d never imagined that day would be today. Barque had chewed us out just yesterday. We’d learned how little we knew about being adventurers and how unprepared we were—

The door flew open with a bang.

“All right! We’re back, old man! Goblin hunt’s done!” Nigu’s voice boomed.

“Hilteeth and Nigu have returned. Mission complete!” said Hilteeth.

The two of them were grinning from ear to ear. They were covered in mud and what was probably goblin blood, like they’d come straight from a battle. I wasn’t sure where the village from their request was, but I could tell they hadn’t stopped to rest. They must’ve rushed straight back the moment they finished their job.

“This means we’re Rank E now! Don’t you dare weasel out of it!”

“Six long months... Finally, a license.”

They were so excited about ranking up, they’d hightailed it back to town just to get their licenses. Well, Rank F was the bottom of the barrel, and I knew those two didn’t want to stay there.

Nigu came over. “Yo, kid. You guys just finish up too? Nice.” He was in such a good mood, he didn’t even blink at Liluetta even though she’d blown up at him not too long ago. “Thanks to you, we... Huh?” His eyes seemed to be glued on something.

“What’s up, Nigu?” Hilteeth asked before he froze.

I tilted my head to see what they were looking at—the three small metal plates in my hand, proof we were registered with the adventurer’s guild.

“Whaaaat?! No freakin’ way! How’d a bunch of kids get to Rank E before us?!”

“I-I-I thought you guys were only taking safe jobs!”

“It was pretty tough, actually,” I told them.

Nigu and Hilteeth clutched their heads, wailed, and dropped to the floor. They were devastated about me ranking up ahead of them. I’d probably feel the same if I had to grind for six months just for a new kid to do better than me. But still, these two were pretty annoying.

“When did you get so chummy with them?” Liluetta asked with a frown.

“Riiight? This is unexpected!” Yune stared curiously at the two guys flailing around on the floor.

I don’t think we’re chummy, but... Whatever. Let’s go with that.

“Liluetta. Yune.”

We had money in hand and a plan for making more. Plus, sleeping in a stable after becoming a real adventurer would be embarrassing. With Waine already living here, and Liluetta and Yune moving to a new place, it felt like a good turning point for me.

“I’m moving into the big room upstairs,” I announced.

He had told me to aim for him, and I still had no idea how far away he was, but I was taking one step forward.

Chapter 6: Battle Banquet

The young man was beautiful. With a face like a work of art and a voice like a poet’s, he turned heads wherever he went.

The young man was strange. He never cared what others thought and never held back.

The young man was free. No one could stop him from being who he was.

The young man was an adventurer.

A few nights after I started staying in the big room upstairs, we were about to start training as usual when that young man showed up.

“Well, this looks like fun. Mind if I join in?” he asked with a smile like a kid asking to play a game.

“Per...” Hilteeth was so surprised, his voice cracked. “Peridot? From Seabird Tempest?”

“You gotta be kidding me. No way...” Nigu whimpered like a scared puppy.

Peridot wasn’t just any intruder. He was a huge deal, and their reactions were pretty normal. But since he and I had met in a stable, it’d taken me a while to realize just how important he was as the top adventurer in our guild.

I still felt a little uneasy about everything that had happened recently. I didn’t know how to act around him, even though I knew he would just smile and accept whatever I did. But everything had changed. The way I saw him now was completely different. So all I could do was give him a polite nod and say a quiet hello.

Waine wasn’t like us rookies, though. It was business as usual when he talked to Peridot.

“Yo, Peridot,” he said. “Done with the sahuagin hunt?”

“But of course. We rooted out every last sahuagin around that island. Took out quite a few extra while we were at it. Should be safe for the fishermen to head back out to sea now.”

“That’s a relief. Even if the whole thing was your screwup, good on you for fixing it.”

“Why, it was like a vacation. Casting lines out over the open sea and watching the horizon isn’t so bad once in a while.”

He made it sound like a relaxing holiday Chikka would’ve gotten jealous about, but they hadn’t really gone on a fishing trip. I’d heard that they’d used their own ship as bait to lure out the sahuagin. Chikka would not have been okay with that. She loved fishing but hated anyone interrupting her once her line was in the water.

“So? What’s gotten into you?” asked Waine. “You even brought your own stick. Don’t tell me you actually want in on our training... Looks like you’re all fired up.”

Peridot wasn’t wearing armor, but he was holding a wooden stick for sparring. It was about as long as he was tall. He normally used a spear around the same size, so that stick would let him fight with everything he had. Maybe he’d shown up on a whim, but he came prepared to go all out. That meant the top adventurer at the Raging Kelpie’s Tail came looking for someone worth unleashing his full strength on.

Waine stepped forward with a fearless grin. He was the strongest fighter among the four of us. “Fine by me. I’ve been wanting to spar with you anyway.”

It felt like the night air itself was shivering with anticipation. A bunch of off-duty adventurers rushed out of the guild, clutching bottles of booze and eager to watch—maybe someone with really good eyesight had seen what was happening out here.

Nigu and Hilteeth swallowed nervously. They kept their eyes glued to the two men squaring off. Even I felt my heart beat faster at the battle about to unfold. Just by being here, this man had transformed our ordinary evening into something entirely different.

The battle banquet was about to begin.

“Ah, sorry, Zarnard. I’m not interested in you,” said Peridot.

All the tension and excitement in the air vanished. The bystanders had all been ready for a great show. Now they just stood around with their mouths hanging open. Nigu and Hilteeth were stunned too, and all I could do was blink.

“You know my name’s Waine.”

I could see a vein bulging on Waine’s forehead like he was about to burst, but that was all he said. Peridot’s comment had seriously killed the mood, and he didn’t seem to feel bad about getting Waine’s name wrong in front of this whole crowd at all.

He has nerves of steel, I thought. There’s no way I can pull that off.

“Oh, is that right?” Peridot asked. “Never mind that. Would you step aside? I actually came here to challenge him.”

“Him? You serious?!” Waine glanced over his shoulder and jabbed his thumb out.

“Yes, yes. What’s the problem? Do I need your permission?”

“No, I mean, do whatever you want.”

Everyone stared, including Nigu and Hilteeth. I thought they were looking at someone behind me so I turned around, but a bunch of onlookers were watching me with curious expressions. Waine and Peridot were staring right at me too.

“He’s asking for you, kid,” said Waine.

“Wha?” I didn’t get what was happening.

“G-Go! Just go already!” said Nigu.

“We’ll visit your grave!” added Hilteeth.

They both shoved me forward.

Waine plopped his hand on my shoulder. “Fight like you’re trying to kill him. Hell, go ahead and kill him if you can.” And then he walked away, brushing past me as he went.

Was that supposed to be advice? He looks so unmotivated...

It was just Peridot and me now. We were standing face-to-face, but none of this felt real.

“Hello, Kiriand. Sorry to drop in like this.”

“Uh, no, not at all...” Part of me understood what was happening, but most of me still hadn’t caught up. Everyone was staring, which was really uncomfortable, and the two of us were just standing there with sticks in our hands. Until...

“I, Peridot, Bearer of the Radiant Sun and leader of Seabird Tempest, formally challenge Kiriand, apprentice of Old Badger the Yellow-Bellied, to a duel. Will you accept?”

I thought about whether refusing might be an option. If I said no, he would probably just smile, shrug, say “what a shame,” and leave.

“I accept.” My mouth moved before I could think. My body shifted into a fighting stance. My soul had called out to me and told me what it wanted. Why should I hold back?

Peridot smiled, then let that smile fade. It was the first time I’d seen him with a serious look on his face. It was beautiful, scary, and kind of cool all at the same time.

When he raised his stick, everyone fell silent. That sudden quiet felt cool and crisp.

Waine’s voice rang out. “Let the match begin.”

Waine had taught me the basics of using a spear, but his main weapon was a sword. Nigu and Hilteeth used swords too. I’d never actually seen another spear fighter in action.

Peridot’s hair stirred in the night breeze and shone bright green under the moonlight. He stood with his body at an angle to me and leaned forward a little with his knees slightly bent. His shoulders were loose, and his stick was steady as it pointed right at me.

Just looking at him in that stance filled me with dread. I was still a beginner, but I could tell that the way he was holding himself was flawless. There was no tension, no hesitation, and no weak spot. He wasn’t trying to put himself in a fighting stance—his body flowed into it as naturally and easily as stretching first thing in the morning.

I was mesmerized by his form, which had to be the result of endless repetition and effort that turned into instinct steeped into every part of his body. I’d already known he was on a totally different level, but I didn’t expect that to hit me so hard before either of us had made a single move.

I should analyze him—his weight is slightly forward. That was one thing I could understand: He was planning to strike. I didn’t know if I could defend against it, but I knew I couldn’t win if I rushed in. For now, I shifted my own weight back.

One thing at a time, I told myself.

It was hard to gauge distance, which was enough to make me anxious and my breaths shallow. The way he aimed his stick at me was throwing off my sense of space. The tip was perfectly still and pointed right at my eyes, and the rest of the stick lined up with my line of sight.

In other words, I could only see the tip of his weapon. With the rest hidden, I couldn’t tell how far it could reach. Is that really a technique?! How is that even possible? But there was no time for questions. It was possible because I was seeing it with my own eyes, and all I could do was laugh while pretending not to be nervous.

Stay calm. Think. Remember. I’d seen the stick before we’d started. It was roughly the same length as Peridot’s height. Then I checked the distance from my toes to his... I was two steps away from entering his striking range. That meant he wouldn’t attack just yet.

I let out a long breath and felt sweat drip from the tip of my chin. He was only standing there, but I was already having a hard time breathing. The way he was standing was probably the basic stance for anyone who used a spear. It was similar to what Waine had taught me, which was the only stance I knew, except Peridot’s version was so much more refined. I became painfully aware of all the flaws in how I was standing and holding my spear just by looking at him.

But I did know what would be annoying for him to deal with. I’d experienced it a few times myself, during our training sessions. Because he was standing at an angle and not facing me directly, he wouldn’t want me moving into the blind spot behind him. So I started to move, but before I could take a step—before my foot had even left the ground—the tip of Peridot’s stick twitched.

Is it coming?!

I tensed up, but Peridot didn’t attack. He was still in his calm, focused stance like nothing had happened. The humid night air crawled over my skin.

Was that a feint? No. If I’d moved any more than that, he would’ve closed the gap between us and hit me in an instant. The thought sent a cold shiver down my spine.

I couldn’t take a deep breath to calm myself, my heart was pounding in my chest, and my palms were so sweaty, I started to worry about my grip slipping. My head felt like it was going to explode. Just standing there with my weapon raised was draining my stamina fast.

Wait. Just wait. Peridot’s gonna make the first move. That’s why he’s leaning forward like that. If I give him an opening, any opening, he’ll strike the moment it appears. So I’ll wait.

I adjusted my stance again, angling my body and leaning back. I lowered my hips, kept my shoulders loose, and aimed my stick at Peridot.

Our eyes met, and I stared him down. If you’re coming, then come—

But how did we end up here in the first place? Why did he challenge me to a match? I’m sure he has his reasons. Maybe some special meaning or even a greater purpose?

Or maybe I didn’t need to think that hard. Peridot hadn’t explained anything, but he had challenged me to a duel. So he was telling me to come at him with everything I had, and that was all I needed to know.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been like this. He still hadn’t moved, but the pressure he exerted continued to build. Sweat poured from my body and soaked my clothes until they felt heavy, even though neither of us had taken a single step.

Meeting his gaze made my skin crawl now. His stick started to look like a spear with a razor-sharp tip, and the way he wielded it while leaning back seemed larger than life. It felt like I was staring up at a giant from the myths and legends I’d read.

Amazing. Terrifying. But I’m happy someone like him exists.

“Huh?” I felt a creeping sense of wrongness, and I didn’t know what it was, but instinct was telling me that something had changed. If I hadn’t noticed that, I probably wouldn’t have reacted at all.

Without moving his feet, Peridot unleashed his spear.

It was an overwhelmingly beautiful sight.

“Match over.”

I heard Waine’s voice. Then I noticed Peridot’s weapon pressed against my armor. Finally, I realized our match was really over. But I couldn’t believe or understand it.

I had tried to block him, or at least I thought I had, but his thrust had pierced through my stick like it was nothing and snapped it in two. Except my hands didn’t hurt at all, even though they should’ve after taking that attack. They were only a little tingly and numb. What kind of technique did Peridot use?

No, forget that. I could accept what that attack had done because I’d seen it from the best seat in the house and experienced it myself. That part was fine, but something else didn’t make sense—those two steps between me and Peridot’s reach. He hadn’t moved forward, but his spear had hit me. That had to be...

“Magic?” I asked.

“Hardly.” Peridot chuckled and dropped his stance. Then he let his stick clatter to the ground like he’d lost every last scrap of interest in it. “You’ll clean that up, won’t you? That’s the loser’s duty.” He smiled, turned on his heel, waved lazily over his shoulder, and disappeared into the night.

That curt goodbye wasn’t like Peridot at all. But the way he’d acted just now made me understand how totally and completely I’d been defeated. I hadn’t even moved a single step.

“You... You jerk! That’s not fair, damn it!” Nigu yelled.

“Seriously not fair...” Hilteeth murmured.

The two of them seemed really frustrated. Their hands were trembling, and I wondered if they felt jealous or inspired. They were probably jealous I got to fight Peridot—that sparkling warrior was special to every rookie adventurer.

But what’s not fair? I don’t get it. All I did was lose without doing anything.

None of the people watching were paying attention to me anymore. Almost everyone had gone back inside because the show was over, and the few who lingered were chatting about whether it’d been worth watching a match that wasn’t even a real fight or trying to guess what had gotten into Peridot this time.

No one cared about me, and everyone had expected me to lose. That made me laugh out loud.

“But losing still sucks!” I said to no one in particular. I felt my shoulders relax, and a cool breeze brushed past me.

I went to pick up Peridot’s stick. I was hot and drenched in sweat, and I just wanted to collapse and cool off. But I had a job to do...the loser’s job. I crouched down and reached forward.

On the moonlit ground, I saw faint scuff marks in the dirt. I wasn’t sure what they were at first, but then I realized they were footprints. I dropped to my hands and knees and looked closely.

That two-step distance... The range of his stick that was hard to judge... That twitch when I tried to move into his blind spot... The fact that he never attacked even though he was leaning forward...

I finally understood what had felt off. He’d leaned forward at the beginning, but by the end he’d been leaning back.

“Little by little, he moved forward...”

He’d shuffled his feet toward me but shifted his weight back, just a little bit at a time, to keep his upper body in place. That made me think he wasn’t moving at all, and it was how he’d moved into striking range without me noticing.

I felt like that was his way of telling me, This is how you move forward.

I realized that was why Nigu and Hilteeth had said “not fair.” And I couldn’t blame them for being jealous, because I got to learn something from someone who was truly amazing.

***

“Hold it, Peri-dolt.”

The man disappearing into the alley stopped and looked at me. “What’s the matter, Markens? You don’t look too happy.”

“It’s W-A-I-N-E. How many times do I have to tell you?” I asked. This bastard really doesn’t remember people’s names. Usually I just shrug it off because that’s just how he is, but he’s pissing me off tonight.

I decided to let it go, because my name didn’t matter right now. “You pulled something real outta character today. That kid get under your skin or something?”

Peridot shrugged. “I was just repaying a favor. I owe him quite a few, after all: the story about Old Badger, the intel on the gathering spot, and the fact that he wrapped up that mess without a single casualty even though we may have caused it. That makes three debts. I can’t call myself the top adventurer around here if I let all that slide without paying him back.”

A debt, huh. Yeah, I guess you could call it that. No way this guy’s gonna let a rookie outdo him on favors owed when he’s number one at the guild.

Since they were both spear users, Peridot letting the kid see one of his signature techniques was his way of evening the score. He was weird, unpredictable, and hard to read, but this time he’d played it straight.

“So that was one of your big moves,” I said.

“Not bad, right? A thrust is the first spear technique we learn and the last one we master. I wouldn’t say I’ve perfected it myself just yet, but I think it was helpful for him to see.”

“Don’t play dumb.” He’s really pissing me off now. If I let myself slip, I might take a swing at that smug grin of his. “I’m talking about what you did before—a worthless technique for adventurers. No one uses that against monsters. Creeping ahead to hide your reach is pathetic.”

Nobody’s got time for that if more monsters are around or gonna show up. Even if you’re only fighting one, it’s not gonna sit still long enough for you to pull that off. In other words...

“That’s a technique for killing people,” I said.

The corner of Peridot’s mouth twitched up. “And?”

“He doesn’t need crap like that.”

“Ahhh, I see. So that’s where you’re coming from.” He nodded like he’d figured everything out. A smug smile was on his face. “Then allow me to argue the opposite. I say he does need techniques for killing people. He’s the kind of boy who would say ‘all life is precious’ with a straight face. The least I can do is make sure he has some tools he can use in his back pocket. If he doesn’t, he’ll die.”

“So you chose that technique for him? You taught him something for killing people, just to make sure he can do it?”

He’d given the kid a brutal, blood-soaked gift. Was he out of his damn mind? There had to be better things to pass on.

“You fought alongside us against people the other day, didn’t you?” Peridot asked.

“The town guards are supposed to do stuff like that, not adventurers.”

“Requests from caravans or merchant ships often require fighting bandits and such.”

“His party won’t take those.”

The man chuckled like he was mocking a fool making a scene. “What about your training? Doesn’t he fight people in those matches? Isn’t that practice for killing human beings?”

“What, should we start hauling monsters in every night?”

“Ha ha! Fair point. I was being unkind with that question. Do forgive me.”

His laugh was more like a sneer, and I felt like putting him in the ground for it. At the same time, I was surprised. He always struck me as someone who only cared about himself. He did everything at his own pace and lived in his own world. I didn’t think he cared about other people enough to bother looking down on them.

“For someone like you to be so angry about this is an absolute joke, mercenary.” Peridot’s voice, now low and full of resentment, shifted the air around him. Something about him had changed, and the night felt heavy and cold.

I could almost taste his intent to kill.

“War and murder is your bread and butter,” said Peridot. “Is it fun, pretending to be an adventurer? If you insult us any further, I will kill you. But if you’re still interested in continuing this conversation, by all means.”

“I quit the mercenary life over two years ago.”

Trying to understand a man like him wasn’t easy. Hell, it was probably impossible. He was a strange freak of nature who was anything but normal. Even trying to understand him was a waste of time.

“No,” he replied, “you simply stopped spilling human blood and started spilling monster blood instead.”

I was wrong. Anger lays a man bare. It reveals what he holds sacred whether he wants it to or not. Right now, I can understand one thing about Peridot: He’s an adventurer.

“What, did killing people finally get to you?” he asked. “Is that why you came here? Huh. You’re more fragile than I thought. Oh, I see, that’s why you had him use a spear. Your sword’s made for killing people. You didn’t want to pass that on, so you handed him a weapon you don’t know well. How touching. And pathetic. Because of your worthless sentimentality, that boy’s heading out on adventures with half-baked skills. That’s an insult to him and to his life as an adventurer.”

No one takes more pride in being an adventurer than Peridot.

“Speaking of pathetic, let’s talk about Ranna and Miguel. That was pitiful. You were far too strong for that party. It was like watching a grown man lead children around. Nothing kills the spirit of adventuring faster than someone else keeping you safe. I bet they left because they were bored out of their minds.”

“You bastard!” I yelled.

Ranna and Miguel had decided to stop adventuring and get married, and the two of them were happy together. I wasn’t gonna stand here and listen to this guy pretend he knew anything about them.

He said he’d kill me if I insult him again—that means he should be ready to die too.

“Tell me, mercenary, have you ever gone on an adventure that required all of your strength?”

There was pity in his voice this time, and I couldn’t answer him.

“Say what you want about how things ended up, but they were both weaker than you. So you only ever took soft jobs to match their pace. Am I wrong? How was that for you? Pretty nice, huh, putting your battlefield skills to use. Did being the dependable one feel good? Made you proud, didn’t it, finally finding a place to belong after running away from your past. But how do you think they felt when they were struggling with all their might while you cleaned up without breaking a sweat?”

After Ranna and Miguel got married and I ended up solo again, some Rank F kids asked me to join their party. I didn’t accept. Even if Old Badger hadn’t barged in, I would’ve turned them down.

It was best to party up with people who were at your level. That was common knowledge around these parts, but I hadn’t known that when I’d teamed up with Ranna and Miguel. And I didn’t really get it until I was bawling into my drink at the guild after their wedding.

“You’ve never been on an adventure that forced you to go all out. You’ve never had a quest that made your heart race. So tell me, mercenary, how’s your little adventurer role-play going? Is it fun?”

This man. This bastard. He has no right to talk down to me when he’s a mess like the rest of us.

“You’re way more naive than Kiriand will ever be.”

How can someone believe that adventurers, of all people, are noble?

“Ever heard of adventurer hunters—scumbags who wait outside ruins to jump anyone walking out with treasure? Or villagers who try to murder the adventurers they hire to avoid paying them? What about clashing requests that force us to fight each other? It happens, and it’s not rare. You stay in this line of work long enough, and you’ll end up fighting people. An adventurer deals with whatever the world throws at them, so don’t dump your selfish ideals on that child.”

I was nothing, as far as that man was concerned. That was why he never even bothered to remember my name.

“Being an adventurer is a way of life, mercenary.”

He turned his back on me and walked into the back alley until he disappeared into the dark.

Epilogue: The Story of How One Child Became an Adventurer

Being an adventurer is a way of life. They casually weigh their lives against coin and willingly face peril every day. To ordinary people, the death of an adventurer has no meaning; the life of an adventurer isn’t worth a second glance.

“Someone who lives like that will die like that.”

Every adventurer understands this sooner or later. When they do, they stop thinking about how they’ll die and start thinking about how they’ll live.

Adventurers live freely. They’re free to walk any path. They’re free to spend their days rotting away in a tavern, drinking themselves numb after realizing how small and insignificant they really are. They’re free to chase danger while thinking nothing will change if they drop dead. Or they’re free to fight that belief and claw their way toward becoming someone who matters. And, of course, they’re always free to stop being an adventurer.

Adventurers have a choice, and no one has the right to question that. As long as they face that choice without flinching and walk the path they choose for themselves, that person will surely find their answer to this question.

“Who are you?”

I turned my body, relaxed my knees, and angled the tip of my spear up a little while keeping myself as loose as possible. I pictured that warrior standing in front of me and made every part of my body fall still.

Then I nudged my foot forward a tiny bit. It would’ve been easier if I’d been standing on something slippery like packed snow—trying to shift my foot and weight on dirt without anyone noticing felt impossible. When I tried, I got all tense and stiff.

“To think you have to convince your opponent you’re not moving your hands or feet... I have to admit I’m impressed. He really is quite a powerful adventurer,” said Liluetta.

“Riiiight? Well, he is part of a top-ranked party, so I guess it makes sense,” Yune added.

The two of them were sitting under the shade of a tree with complicated expressions on their faces. I didn’t blame them. Based on how Peridot usually acted, I doubted anyone could’ve guessed he was that strong.

We were out back behind the guild where I always trained, but it was early in the morning. I’d asked the girls for some extra practice time before we got started today because I wanted to try those movements myself.

“It’s about where your weight is,” said Nigu. “When you move one foot, put your weight on your other one.”

Hilteeth rolled his eyes. “Are you stupid, Nigu? That makes your whole body shift. Getting closer to your enemy becomes pointless once the enemy notices you moving.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think Peridot can pull it off?”

Nigu and Hilteeth were here trying to do the same move and having a debate about how to do it. After I’d told them what I’d noticed about the footprints last night, they got all excited and wouldn’t stop talking until they both fell asleep. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if they skipped work today just to figure it out.

“Yo, tiny!” Chikka leaned out of a window and waved at me. “What are you doing?”

The mage beside her yawned. “Strange stance for spear practice.”

Sheya’s comment made me realize my shoulders and legs were way too tense. Not good... An opponent would know I was up to something. And if they attacked me, I would probably be too stiff to block.

I sighed and dropped my stance. I didn’t think one tiny and slow movement would be this hard. “Morning, Chikka. Hi, Sheya. I was just trying to see if I could do that thing Peridot did yesterday.”

“Oh, trying to act like that weirdo? Good luck with that,” said Chikka.

“If you start turning into him, stop,” added Sheya.

I wasn’t trying to copy his personality or anything, but I could see why they misunderstood. They weren’t at the match yesterday, so all they saw was me being really awkward just now. That was kind of embarrassing.

I thought about explaining myself, but I noticed a grumpy-looking warrior in metal armor by the window.

“Waine, do you know how to do that move?” I asked.

He’d disappeared after the match last night. Then, when I’d gone up to the big room, he’d already fallen asleep. So I hadn’t asked him yet. But if anyone other than Peridot knew, it’d be him.

Waine let out a long sigh. “He already showed you. Figure it out yourself.”

I grumbled at his answer, but it did feel like something I should figure out on my own. I was the one who had experienced Peridot’s move. If I wanted to steal it, then it was up to me to reach out and grab it.

“Hmm...” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. I hadn’t noticed anything else during the fight... But after that, when I saw the footprints on the ground, I saw something like a zigzag... “Oh! That’s it!”

I got into my stance again, with my body at an angle and my hips low. I lifted my toes and pivoted on my heel to shift my foot a little. Then I planted my toes and lifted my heel this time to rotate my foot again. By doing all of that, my foot had crept forward just a tiny bit, less than the length of my fingertip.

“Oooh!” Nigu and Hilteeth cheered and started doing the same thing right away. They were wobbly, awkward, and needed a lot of practice, but they had the basic moves down.

Peridot had done this over and over during our match to close the distance between us.

“Useless in real combat,” Liluetta said.

“Like a caterpillar, riiight?” Yune added.

They both laughed. We probably did look pretty funny. Or maybe they thought it was silly to put in all that effort just to move a tiny distance. Either way, I did kind of want to remind them that this move was the reason I had lost.

“You’re really putting your heart into this. And you usually never practice spearwork during the day. What’s gotten into you?” Liluetta asked.

She was right. I’d never trained in the morning before today because I had to be on alert during our adventures, and training with Waine always happened at night anyway. Plus, since Liluetta and Yune always headed home before dark, they had never seen me train like this before.

“Hmm... I guess it’s partly because I don’t want to forget my match with Peridot yesterday...”

As I searched for the right words, I looked up. The clear and cloudless blue sky was so wide and open, I felt like it could swallow me whole.

During the job with the brick shop guy, I remembered wishing I looked strong enough for people to trust me. In the haunted mansion, I’d wanted to be strong enough to hold the enemy at bay. After the sahuagin fight, and after talking to Peridot... That was when I really wanted to be strong. I wanted strength so I could be free.

After I’d realized how weak I was during my matches with Nigu and Hilteeth, and after Peridot had showed me just how far I was from my goal, I was too embarrassed to talk about wanting to be strong and free. But I still wanted to keep moving forward, even if all I could do was take one small step.

I touched the metal plate hanging from the cord around my neck—my guild license from the Raging Kelpie’s Tail. I still didn’t have enough strength, technique, or knowledge. I wasn’t anywhere close to being good enough. But this license proved I had a place here. So I figured this was a good answer for now.

“Because I’m an adventurer.”

Afterword

What kind of food do you all like? I love seafood. Fish, shellfish, octopus, squid, shrimp, crab... They’re all so delicious! Even jellyfish, sea cucumbers, and sea squirts are too. Those are kind of an acquired taste, but I still get the urge to eat them once in a while. Oh, and I can eat seaweed salad endlessly. I’ve been telling myself for years that I want to go ocean fishing, but I still haven’t done it. This is KAME, stuck living in a landlocked prefecture!

Perhaps it’s only natural to long for what you don’t have or for things that feel far away. The town I chose as the setting for this series is called Hiriyenka, a port town by the sea. I’ve been to the ocean many times, and it really is wonderful. Boats floating on the waves, flocks of seabirds overhead, hermit crabs scuttling along the shore... I love clean beaches that are great for swimming and popular with tourists, and I also enjoy fishy-smelling harbors full of all kinds of ships. Rocky coastlines carved by the wind and waves have their own charm too. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the mountains, but I get super hyped whenever I go anywhere by the water.

Looking back, I think I chose Hiriyenka as a setting because of a fleeting dream I had one day while gazing at the ocean. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a town like this someday? I thought. Living a peaceful seaside life, fishing every day in the ocean breeze, and eating delicious seafood sounds like the ultimate dream, right? I’d love to try spearfishing someday too.

By the way, since the ocean’s pretty far from where I live, finding reference material can be tough. This volume had my first seaside battle scene, and I remember really struggling when I wrote it. Researching online, checking books, digging up old photos from my past visits to the coast... Figuring out how to describe everything took a lot of effort.

Why didn’t I just set the story somewhere easier to research? Simple. Because I love the sea. When you love something, that’s all the justification you need.

So how was volume 3 of They Don’t Know I’m Too Young for the Adventurer’s Guild?

One question I’ve had since the very beginning of this series is, what exactly is an adventurer? In the real world, adventuring by fighting monsters with swords and magic isn’t a real job. If you’re excavating ruins, that’s archaeology. People might call you an explorer or adventurer if you’re exploring uncharted lands, but that’s not the same thing.

Adventuring is a profession that exists only in fantasy worlds, but so many stories treat it like a totally normal job. When I sat down and really thought about it, I realized just how strange adventurers are. In this volume, I decided to reflect on what it means to be an adventurer. I tried to write one possible answer by focusing on the people in Kiri’s life—those above him and those beside him.

If you found yourself nodding along or laughing and saying, “Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of people adventurers are,” then I couldn’t be happier.

Now that we’re three volumes in, you’d think I’d be getting used to this whole publishing a book thing... I’m not. I’m still scrambling and causing trouble for the people around me. I’m especially indebted to my editor and proofreader. Truly, I can’t thank them enough. There are just so many mistakes I’d never notice on my own, no matter how many times I reread my drafts. I’m grateful for their help every single time. Thank you so much.

Speaking of people who help me, a huge thank you to ox, who continues to draw such wonderful illustrations, and GUNP, who’s doing an amazing job with the manga adaptation. I’m always so grateful.

And, of course, to every single person who’s picked up this book: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart! I truly hope you’ll keep supporting me.