An Unyielding Will

He screwed up…

Inside the dark cave, the sound of something dripping echoed here and there. A chill crawling along the ground made his body tremble, further amplifying his fear of the unseen thing pursuing him.

Farther away, quickly… Everyone else was already done for… Hurry, hurry…

“Ahah, you still think you can run away?”

The moment he heard a dull, wet sound, he felt his entire body grow hot. It hurt, it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt!!!

“Huh? I thought I held back. Sorry, sorry, I accidentally cut your leg off. Fuhahahaha!”

“Ah… agh…”

A horrible wheezing sound leaked from his throat. Impossible… He had already gotten this close…

“Trying to run from me is pointless, you know. I mean, I was Purple Moon-class once, after all~? So obviously I’m waaaay stronger than worthless riffraff like you, right? Understand? Even a brain-dead maggot like you can understand that much, riiight?”

“Ch… Cha… nel…”

The man swept back his irritatingly silky red hair and sneered, twisting his bright-red lips into the shape of a crescent moon.

“That’s right, it’s Chanel-sama. Unlike weak dogs like you, I’m an exceptional person who stands above others. Show me a little more reverence, would you?”

“I’ll… kill…”

“Huh? What’s a mere Blue Moon-class saying? Is this really all the Sword of Flashing Lightning, the deputy-leading team of the Wyvern’s Talon Guild, can manage? Pathetiiic.”

When Chanel brought his hand down, that marked the man’s final moment. Someone like this… someone like this…

“Uwaaah, gross. You got blood all over my clothes. Well, thanks to what this trash told me, I know the next group coming is an all-female Guild team, huh? Maybe I’ll have some fun for the first time in a while. Cute girls wanted! Just kidding!! Ahahahahaha!”

~Outskirts of Lichten~

“What? Some other team accepted the request first? Are you really a Guild Master?”

“No, I’m genuinely sorry… I completely forgot about it. A few teams from my Guild had headed toward the area around that cave. I’d only ordered them to investigate the surroundings, but for some reason I haven’t been able to contact them…”

Meiro sighed. They had driven that ice carriage through Lichten and finally reached the gate leading out to the outskirts, only to receive this telepathic message at the worst possible moment. Incidentally, the reason it had taken them so long to reach the gate was—

“When you’re in a hot-spring town, you’ve gotta have hot-spring buns, right?”

“Ooh~ Exactly~! This fluffiness is irresistible~”

That was why. Going into town to replenish their supplies had been fine, but no one could stop Rose and Konoha’s appetites.

“Haah… So? Retrieving those idiots is part of our job too, then?”

“Only if it’s convenient. There are plenty of skilled adventurers from our Guild among them, so I doubt they’d misjudge their own strength and head deep into the cave. So if you find them, just give them a warning.”

“That’s practically the same thing. What a pain. Ah, honestly, you’ve got red bean paste on your mouth!”

Meiro vigorously wiped Konoha’s mouth. Was she a child…?

“Muu, Mee-chan, Mee-chan, I want you to wipe mine too~”

“Wipe your own mouth.”

“Waaah, Mee-chan’s so mean~”

“This one is a pain too…”

They started the carriage moving again and headed toward the cave. Completely unaware of Meiro’s struggles as she wished for another person to handle the retorts, Rose happily popped another hot-spring bun into her mouth.

“Munch munch, so those two teams went inside the cave~?”

“You heard all that while making such a fuss?”

“Apparently, my brain has some really amazing function that separates necessary information from everything else. So even without thinking about it, useful information gets stored in my head somewhere easy to retrieve~”

“…You really are a genius. If only you acted like one all the time.”

“If I acted like a genius all the time, people would figure out my patterns when it really mattered. A true genius has lots of different cards to play and knows how to hide them well~”

“I’ll keep that in mind. As for your earlier question… I think one team probably entered, but I’m not so sure about the other.”

According to Anson, the first team investigating the area around the cave was apparently an elite group, while the team that headed there afterward had seemingly acted on their own—or rather, forced the issue and gone to the cave without permission. Apparently, it was an all-female team whose leader was famous for being extremely competitive.

“Ah~ So she’s the type who dies first on a battlefield~”

“Seems that way. The reckless, charge-straight-ahead type, I suppose. Considering how fast this carriage is, we’ll probably catch up with them in front of the cave… but convincing them sounds incredibly annoying.”

“Huh? Someone’s waving some kind of flag over there?”

The half-asleep Konoha seemed to have spotted something.

“A lot of… women.”

“Haah… And since that’s Crux Cave, it looks like we managed to catch up with them after all.”

Apparently, one of their carriage wheels had broken, and they were now witnessing the rather surreal sight of a group of women noisily panicking while waving a flag.

“Hey! You people in the pretty carriage! Heeey!”

“They’re shouting something.”

“They probably rented some piece-of-junk carriage and ended up wrecking it.”

They brought the ice carriage close to the broken vehicle and stopped. Konoha slowly opened the door and stepped down onto the grassland.

The female adventurers watched her with visibly astonished expressions. Then—

“S-so cute…”

“W-wait, what!? Is she a noble or something!?”

“N-no way! What is with this girl!? She’s adorable!!”

They began reacting exactly like the female students at Racluzero University.

“U-um… You’re adventurers from the Wyvern’s Talon Guild, right? Anson-san asked me to give you a warning—”

“Aaahhh! Beautiful girl over there! You don’t need to say another word!”

A short-haired brunette woman leaped to the front.

“You’re reinforcements! Anson-san, you sly dog! He sent us such an adorable girl so we could replenish our supply of 『cuteness』! All riiight! Now we absolutely have to complete this quest and become Anson-san’s right-hand women!”

“Huh?”

(W-wait? Is she getting herself worked up all on her own?)

“Um… We’re here to clear this cave ourselves too, so we’d really appreciate it if you would simply heed the warning… or, well…”

Konoha timidly tried to speak, but the woman in front of her grabbed Konoha’s hands with sparkling eyes.

“It’s fine! Nameless beautiful girl! All you have to do is stay by our side and watch us fight super coolly! Then you can report our heroic exploits back to Anson-san and everything will be perfect!”

“Um, wait, I—”

“All right, everyone, let’s go! Hip hip!”

“YEAHHHH!!!”

“Wai t. Right. There. Skill 《Freezing》.”

At Meiro’s signal, freezing air blasted from her staff, covering the surrounding area in frost.

“Nyaaaaah!! C-cold!!”

An especially large amount of frigid air blasted directly at the woman in front, leaving her entire body coated in white snow. Meiro strode over to her, grabbed her by the collar, and pressed her staff against the woman’s heart.

“W-what are you doing!?”

“Quiet.”

Perhaps overwhelmed by Meiro’s presence, the woman gradually fell silent.

“Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. We came here as an 『extra』 part of our actual request to warn you to turn back. Time is finite, so could you stop this idiotic farce and return to Lichten immediately instead of wasting ours? Oh, and one more thing…”

Meiro took Konoha’s hand and pulled her slender body against her own.

“Eek! M-Meiro-chan?”

“Would you mind keeping your hands off my Konoha? I find it extremely unpleasant.”

Her sapphire-like eyes glared sharply. The cold air pouring from her entire body clearly expressed the extent of Meiro’s anger.

“Mee-chan, calm down a little?”

Rose, who had somehow already gotten out of the carriage, took Meiro’s hand and made her release the woman.

“They were being pushy too, but let’s calm down first, okay? We can’t even have a proper conversation like this~”

“…You’re right. My apologies.”

The woman collapsed into a sitting position and began coughing.

“Leader!”

“Are you all right, Leader!?”

“Cough, cough… Ow… What the hell was that about!?”

The woman narrowed her eyes and glared fiercely at Meiro. Her hostility was completely undisguised.

“You’re messengers from Anson-san? Too bad! We can’t turn back! If anything, you lot should leave! This isn’t a place for frail little girls like you!”

“You suddenly became rather bold. What happened? Did I wound that cheap little pride of yours?”

“_____!? You…!”

The woman’s companions desperately restrained her as she tried to lunge at Meiro. Meanwhile, Konoha calmed Meiro down by tugging on her sleeve.

“Meiro-chan, fighting is bad. Sorry. You got angry because of me, right? Thank you.”

Konoha smiled with slightly watery eyes. In that instant, Meiro’s darkened eyes lit up all at once. Was it just imagination that they briefly turned into hearts?

“Konoha… All right. Just don’t make such a tearful face, okay?”

She gently placed a hand near Konoha’s eyes and wiped away her tears. When Meiro smiled, Konoha smiled happily in return.

“Waaah, thanks for the lovey-dovey feast~. So, has the person over there calmed down too~?”

The woman remained wary of Rose, whose hood was pulled low over her face, for a while, but once she realized the voice belonged to a young girl, her caution eased slightly.

“A White Moon-class thinks she can order me around?”

“I haven’t even said anything yet~. You should really listen properly when someone talks to you~”

“Sorry, but I don’t take orders from people below me, and I have no intention of obediently doing what Anson-san says either. No matter what, we have to keep going.”

A powerful determination burned in her eyes. After hearing that much, Meiro and the others no longer had the energy to stop her. More accurately, they simply found the whole thing exhausting.

“We warned you, all right? And the situation ahead is genuinely dangerous right now. At the very least, I’d rather you didn’t get in our way when we move forward.”

“Hmph. Let’s go, everyone. We have to find Jira and the others…”

(So she won’t listen at all.)

The woman at the front turned on her heel and began walking toward the cave once again. The rest of her companions followed one after another, though several of them waved to Konoha, perhaps reluctantly, or perhaps out of guilt.

“You don’t have to wave back.”

“That’s one of Konon’s good points, though~”

“Doesn’t it bother you? Being spoken to like that?”

“Judging people by their tags is actually pretty normal in a sense. I’ve dealt with that kind of thing plenty of times before, so it doesn’t really bother me~. I’ve seen far worse and far more unreasonable things than that…”

“I don’t think they’re bad people at heart.”

After finishing waving, Konoha turned around and said that.

“I think they probably have some feeling or conviction they absolutely refuse to compromise on, and they got heated because they didn’t want anyone interfering with it. So I think they’re probably good people if you just talk to them normally. That’s the feeling I get.”

“Konoha…”

“Let’s get going too! I’d like to get at least a decent look at the state of the cave before it gets dark!”

Konoha flashed a brilliant smile. As though all the hostility had been drained out of them by it, the other two climbed back into the carriage as well.