I Think It’d Be A Sweet Deal.

The next day. What Kikori heard from Irene at the Adventurers’ Guild, where he went together with Kuon, was a shocking story.

By the way, when they told her about yesterday’s slime hunt, she said, “I’d like the full details,” and they’d been shown into a back room for it.

They even got drinks. The fruit juice was cold and delicious.

“Huh…? The investigation team hasn’t come back?”

“No. That said, they only just set out. Depending on what they find, it’s not unusual for it to take a month or more.”

“So they’ve gone pretty deep, then?”

When Kikori asked, Irene answered, “Yes.”

“If the cause of the abnormality is deeper in, then of course they have to go even deeper to investigate it. Naturally, that extends the number of days until they return.”

“That makes sense… In that case, is it possible the slime showed up because it was fleeing from them?”

“A slime, you say. I received that report earlier, but…”

As she spoke, Irene stared at Kikori intently.

“Destructive magic—Break, was it? There are still parts of that I find hard to believe.”

“Even if you say that…”

“You said you used weapon-breaking magic, Sword Breaker, as a reference, but it isn’t something you can do that easily.”

“Ah… yeah. Someone else told me that too.”

Specifically, Aria had.

Reworking magic—or creating a new spell—wasn’t nearly as simple as people imagined.

All magic existed on a delicate balance.

To put it simply: even if a heavier weapon hit harder, making an ultra-heavy weapon wouldn’t mean you could swing it properly. In fact, because you’d be slower, you’d become weaker.

Or if you tried to make a light weapon even lighter because “light is fast,” it would become so fragile it’d be worse than a toy.

It was common for amateur thinking to turn a spell into trash.

“And yet you said you succeeded in improving it so easily… Well, it doesn’t seem like something other people could copy, at least.”

Yes—while explaining the slime hunt, Kikori had no choice but to describe the basics of his “destructive spell, Break.”

But… as Aria had also said, it was “not a spell that others can easily imitate.”

“In the first place, even with weapon-breaking magic, Sword Breaker, there aren’t many people who can form a clear image of it.”

“…Seems that way.”

The “image required for magic” was apparently harder than Kikori had thought.

It wasn’t something written in the beginner magic book Kikori had read, but magic imagery was apparently like “drawing a blueprint in your head.”

Books for studying magic simplified that and guided you through it.

Which meant a brand-new spell was, apparently, drawing a new blueprint inside your mind.

“Your aptitude seems to be that of a magic warrior, Kikori-san… the same type as Aria. Her creed was ‘if you break it, you win,’ too.”

“Ah… well, it is kind of the truth, yeah.”

“That’s exactly it.”

“Huh?”

“Well, that’s exactly what I’m betting on, actually.”

“Huh?”

Being compared to Aria felt nice, but it also felt like something he shouldn’t accept too readily.

As Kikori thought that… Irene made them a proposal.

“Yes. Kuon-san, would you like to participate in the investigation as well? So far, they’ve been bringing back decent results. Of course, only within what you can handle.”

“Investigation…?”

“Yes. If unexpected trouble turns into a reward, I think it’d be a sweet deal.”

“Well, true.”

Even if they ran into another slime, if the fact itself became part of the reward, that was a sweet offer.

When Kikori glanced at Kuon, Kuon replied, “I think we should take it. What about you, Kikori?”

“I think we should take it too. Oh—and even reporting that nothing happened counts as a reward, right?”

“Yes, of course. Though it’d be a problem if that was all you ever brought back.”

Then it was, without a doubt, a sweet deal.

They nodded to each other, and Kikori decided to accept the request.