Outside The City

…………

……

…

“…Have they gone?”

Snap.

The instant Tooyama and Lazaar left the room, the plump man who was supposed to have been knocked out opened one eye.

“…Yes. Their adventurer registration has been completed safely.”

The Guild Master replied while gathering the documents.

“Oh, you noticed I was awake?”

“Knowing you, I believed you would not miss the crucial parts. My lord.”

“Well, well, as expected of Marie-kun. …Was the Character Roll truly malfunctioning?”

Sapan, the sly one who had been pretending to sleep, stared at the grave good still placed on the table.

This item served as an absolute standard in Guild operations. An incompetent person who overlooked its incomprehensible reaction could never become the administrator of this city.

“Impossible. I have never heard of a grave good malfunctioning. And look, it is normal. It has activated without any problem.”

Marie held her hand over it. Then, naturally, the Character Roll lit up with a faint purple glow and began displaying her information.

“…A man favored by a dragon, who cannot read Unified Language but is strangely versed in ancient Nihon language, who cannot be examined by the Character Roll, and on top of all that, who hears a voice from the Character Roll, huh?”

It was nothing but dangerous material.

Sapan looked down while scratching his head, which had begun thinning and was hidden by a wig.

He did not know how to handle that man. Was it right to bring him in, or was it better to leave him alone?

“Could he be ‘Familiar-Possessed’? If so, all of his strangeness can be explained.”

Marie murmured the words.

“Familiar-Possessed.” Troublesome, secretive beings who had become seeds of conflict in every age.

Sapan let his thoughts run. That man, the dragon slayer Tooyama Naruhito, certainly could have his opacity explained if he were Familiar-Possessed.

However, Sapan’s intuition, especially his intuition for sensing bad premonitions, rang an alarm.

He should not reach an easy answer.

“…There is no need to rush a judgment. Most of this city’s factions should be watching his movements, and in time, materials for judgment will come together… I also do not want to stimulate the dragon too much. …Oh, Marie-kun, the Character Roll.”

Sapan followed that intuition and postponed his conclusion. The Guild Master nodded to that as well.

Suddenly, the Character Roll began moving strangely again.

Intermittently, flash, flash, it blinked with purple light.

“…Huh?”

There was no way for them to know.

In the modern world, computers sometimes showed that behavior when made to process work with far too much information.

The Character Roll was behaving like a computer suffering processing lag.

Sapan and Marie swallowed hard and watched the Character Roll.

“Tooyama Naruhito, recommended role.”

The Character Roll clearly displayed letters. They were readable letters, but the meaning of that word no longer remained in this world.

“Ex…plorer?”

Marie murmured softly. Even she, deeply educated as she was, did not know the word.

“…Marie-kun, this is…”

“It is an adventurer role I have never seen before…”

Marie shook her head at Sapan’s question.

Sapan stroked his own chin. He reached a conclusion in a few seconds.

“Send all the records Uno left to the Imperial Capital University’s research institute. I want opinions from authorities in dracology, prehistoric civilization studies, and angelology.”

“Understood, my lord. …No direct surveillance?”

“Right now, his opacity is frightening, but what is most frightening is the Hoarding Dragon. You saw it, didn’t you? Her state. She changed too much, in only one day. That man, the dragon slayer, changed her. That is no longer a dragon, but a person. A person with the power of a dragon, and on top of that, with a mental age around the teens. And yet her ethics and standards of judgment remain dragonlike and transcendent. Since we do not know what will touch her reverse scale, there will be no direct interference at all. Understood?”

The dragon slayer’s opacity was like the uncanniness of a dead person wandering a main street at noon. The fear of something that should not be there existing with an ordinary face.

However, the fear of the Hoarding Dragon was exactly as it was written: fear of the utterly abnormal being known as a dragon.

Compared to a dead person at noon, an ordinary dragon was much more frightening.

Even if that dead person could kill a dragon, the lord judged that he was still within the scope of humanity.

“As you command, Margrave Sapan von Teach. Lord of our city, the adventure city Agatra.”

“I leave it to you, Heidemarie Snabellia, Guild Master of the adventure city Agatra.”

With short words and a small bow, the Guild Master left the room, and Sapan saw her off.

Feeling reassured by the presence of the excellent representative of one of the city’s powers, Sapan stood from the sofa and stretched.

“Whew. Now then, there are mountains of things to do. Placating the dragon, sharing information with each faction, reporting to the Imperial Capital… Damn those fellows in the House of Nobles. If I die here, I will come back and haunt them.”

Despite his small mutter of dislike, the lips hidden beneath his mustache curled upward somewhat pleasantly.

………

……

“So, Naruhito, are you really fine with suddenly doing this? I submitted the application, at least.”

“Yeah, Lazaar, thanks. Sorry for the trouble. Yes, no problem.”

They walked through the city.

The buildings were made of brick, and the reddish-brown cobblestone road was harder to walk on than he had expected. Tooyama leisurely thought that asphalt had actually been something amazing.

“Hunting, huh. It may indeed bring large earnings, but it carries that much risk as well. You are prepared for that, then?”

After receiving their adventurer badges at the Guild, what Tooyama and Lazaar did next was not accept a request, but submit a hunting application.

“Yeah, I was convinced after hearing that explanation earlier. To get closer to their goal, hunting is the best fit as work. More than anything, being able to get connections with merchants is huge.”

“Connections with merchants?”

Tooyama grinned at Lazaar, who was walking beside him.

Wagging his finger, he put the plan he had assembled in his head into words.

“Yeah. Lazaar, do you know what our strength as explorers… no, adventurers is?”

“An adventurer’s strength? …Let me see. In the Empire, perhaps it is being able to gain the Guild’s backing?”

“Well, that too. It was a pleasant miscalculation that the level of administration is far higher than expected. But that isn’t the greatest strength.”

They proceeded down the main street. Carriages came and went, and people continued moving like blood through blood vessels.

There were shops here and there, some with proper storefronts and others as street stalls. Their methods of business varied, but every shop was full of energy.

That alone showed that this Empire or whatever it was governed itself fairly well.

“It’s being able to turn ourselves into products.”

Tooyama pointed at himself, then at Lazaar.

A particularly tall beastman walked toward them from ahead. Without even meeting his gaze, Tooyama slipped past him and continued walking while receiving a tongue click on his back.

“What do you mean?”

While Lazaar widened his eyes at Tooyama’s movement, he confirmed the meaning of turning themselves into products.

“I’m still not familiar with common sense around here, but the supply of monster materials probably depends almost entirely on the Adventurers’ Guild, right? And the ones who actually go recover those materials are us adventurers.”

Tooyama’s gaze poured over the goods placed all along the main street.

A shop displaying iron weapons, a street stall selling something like household goods, a shop pouring drinks to the brim in wooden mugs.

Various shops were mixed together along this street, but he could see that most of their goods were designed with animal pelts, shells, and things like that.

Just as the Guild Master had said, monster materials seemed to be circulating through most of this country’s economic goods.

“…Ah, I see. Being retained, then.”

Lazaar seemed to understand what Tooyama wanted to say and nodded softly.

“Oh, so that concept already exists? That’s right. In other words, we are primary producers. Becoming one may be easy, but it isn’t work just anyone can continue. I think an excellent adventurer who can steadily recover monster materials can become an asset in and of himself.”

The product with high demand, however, could not be obtained through trade or livestock farming. It could only be obtained by literally risking one’s life to hunt and kill monsters.

No wonder the Guild wanted transactions to go through them. This certainly made money.

As he walked, Tooyama carefully observed the cityscape.

Even at the street stalls, the roofs used to block the sun were probably not cloth, but some kind of skin? No, wing membrane?

The carriages moving through the city did not have covers made only of wood either. He saw several that used blackish shells and bones.

The people passing by who looked like adventurers carried weapons and had their equipment arranged. Their armor and weapons clearly used not only iron, but also the bones and horns of living creatures.

The foundation of the economy. In this world, or at least in this city, monsters were closely tied to one of the foundations of economic activity.

“So Naruhito’s aim is to sell ourselves to merchants?”

At Lazaar’s voice, Tooyama nodded.

“Correct. What we need right now isn’t status or reputation within an organization called the Adventurers’ Guild, but money and connections. Personal connections with merchants through hunting will definitely come in handy later when running a bakery.”

Connections with merchants. Tooyama suspected they were absolutely necessary to open a business in a land where they had no ties.

The term Merchants’ Guild existed. Those people were surely cooperating in order to protect vested interests. Tooyama judged it better to use them than to make enemies of them.

“…You surprise me. You truly are a mysterious fellow. Just when I think you do not know common sense that even children know, you come out with this. Heh, yes, I understand. I will follow you.”

“Yeah, thanks. That said, first we need to choose prey. To wait for contact from sharp-eyed merchants, and for the kids’ food and lodging expenses too, we need results today. Uh, what was it we can hunt at the closest hunting ground to the city again?”

“Yes, as written here. Giant boars, horn rabbits, smile birds… They are mostly beast species and third-rank class monsters.”

Lazaar took a folded booklet from his chest. It contained letters Tooyama could not read and several easy-to-understand drawings.

“Man, I didn’t think they’d give out information on prey appearing nearby for free. That Guild Master is really capable.”

When he had found it being distributed for free inside the Guild, he had frozen with his mouth open.

Honestly, this had been his biggest concern, but the booklet had solved it all at once.

Tooyama’s greatest concern had been lack of information on prey.

If he were a modern dungeon explorer, he could use the Guild’s information terminal or even civilian wikis to research monster species’ ecological information, traits, and sometimes even strategies. But that was not the case here.

This was not merely an unfamiliar land, but an unfamiliar world. Monsters were clearly dangerous creatures that deviated from the ordinary ecosystem and possessed their own unique ecologies.

It likely would not be so easy that his experience and methods from his explorer days could be applied as-is. He had been worried about knowing far too little about the prey, but this booklet solved everything.

“You are right. In the Kingdom, such a thing did not even exist. But there were quite a few copies of this booklet left over.”

Lazaar murmured that it was splendid work.

Tooyama could not read it, but according to Lazaar’s translation, it was a booklet that listed the monster’s name, ecological information, times and places where it was often sighted, and even simple points of caution based on interviews with other adventurers.

To Tooyama, it was worth more than money. The existence of the booklet was probably one factor that made him choose hunting.

“Ah, true. Well, that’s probably it. Judging from the level of those guys who picked a fight with us, maybe they don’t have the brains to understand the importance of information. Hehehe, we’re lucky to have few competitors.”

“That may be the case. Those at a level where they need information on third-rank monsters may value their own equipment and the quality of their companions more than enemy information, while those who understand the importance of information may no longer need information only at the level of this booklet.”

“Oh, Lazaar, you said something good. I see, a mismatch between supply and demand. Hmm, considering the Guild Master’s age, maybe the organization is right in the middle of a transformation period. She is trying various things and changing things in order to raise the overall bottom of the Guild. Nice. That means more business opportunities.”

Tooyama laughed. He remembered the Guild Master’s somewhat tired face.

Then, a man of poor appearance suddenly tried to bump into him from straight ahead. He slipped aside, and at the same time grabbed the fingers that had been reaching for the pocket of Tooyama’s robe.

“Yes, but there are probably many people in the same trade as us who need money and are aiming for hunting. We cannot let our guard down. Oh, a pickpocket?”

“Yes, a pickpocket. Heave-ho.”

Crack.

Without any reaction or hesitation, he bent the thin fingers backward. He felt the bone break and the tendons give out. Tossing the broken hand away with a light slap, he kicked the screaming pickpocket and began moving again.

Lazaar did not seem to mind much either. After looking down at the pickpocket and sighing, he began walking again.

“Uh, what were we talking about? Oh, competition with others in the same trade. Honestly, I don’t think we need to worry about it much.”

“Why not?”

“People who aim for shortcuts die quickly, so the turnover must be fast. The fact that a treasure-like booklet like this is left over means people at the same rank as us are probably almost all amateurs. Normally, jumping at this kind of thing would be obvious.”

Perhaps the people who understood its value were already those who could make a living without relying on reckless hunting.

Tooyama proceeded while receiving the pickpocket’s agony and screams on his back.

“Hmm, Imperial citizens tend to value honor and customs quite a bit. Perhaps they are not very sensitive to new things.”

“Huh… That’ll be a bit troublesome for the bakery business. Well, I’ll think about that later. I can see it now. Is that the place?”

While looking at the cityscape and breaking the pickpocket’s fingers, they had apparently arrived before he knew it.

The wall covering the huge city had gone from part of the distant scenery to an object looming above them, which meant they had reached the city’s outer edge.

“Yes, the East Gate. It is one of Agatra’s entrances and exits. If we submit the application there, we should be able to hunt monsters in the plains region.”

Lazaar murmured while unfolding the application.

“Ohh, seeing it like this, the wall is really damn tall. This really is a fortified city.”

Feeling like he was on an overseas trip, Tooyama looked up at the wall.

How many tens of meters was that? It might not be one hundred meters, but at the very least it was not a height a person could climb.

Something like that surrounded the entire city, so he grew slightly worried that giants might be inside.

“It is a city and wall built during the Great War by the Empire’s first Emperor and the Angel Church’s First Bishop. Roughly speaking, it is two hundred years old. Rumor has it that this wall, built with the power of the saints of the time and Sacrament Holders, was made to fight dragons or something like that.”

“Haha, that’s nice. Meanwhile, dragons are leisurely doing whatever they like inside the walls.”

Exchanging light banter, they walked up to the equally enormous open gate.

The road was wide, and the gate was huge enough to make them look up.

It seemed like even tanks and such could advance through it without issue. Tooyama and the others proceeded as they were.

At some point, the flow of people had become extremely sparse.

“Stop there. Only those authorized by the Adventurers’ Guild may pass through this East Gate. Travelers and citizens are permitted to enter and leave the city only through the opposite West Gate.”

When they were just short of the gate, people waiting in a particularly large building decorated with tapestries and flags called out to stop them.

They wore helmets like hats, silver armor, and conspicuously large halberds.

“No, we’re adventurers. Here, our adventurer badges.”

Tooyama raised a bronze plate like a dog tag from his robe.

“…Tch, fourth-rank bronze badges. Not on a request, then, from the look of it. Where is the hunting application?”

The gatekeepers’ expressions clearly changed. It was an unpleasant face mixed with contempt and disdain.

“Yes, here.”

“…A Lizardonian, huh. The Guild has fallen too, accepting lizards like you.”

The gatekeeper snatched the application Lazaar had unfolded. Tooyama stepped forward to complain, but Lazaar stopped him with a look.

“Haha, I am grateful for the depth of Imperial hearts.”

Lazaar answered the gatekeeper’s words with a smile. Tooyama closed his eyes for an instant and let out a small breath.

“Hmph, smirking like that. Try touching even one lock around here. I’ll cut off that hand.”

“Yes, how frightening. I will be careful.”

“…Are we done now? You confirmed it, right?”

His voice came out low. Lazaar was handling it like an adult, so if he snapped, there would be no point. Tooyama simply wanted to leave this place quickly.

“Huh? What’s that attitude? Looks like a newly made fourth-rank doesn’t know how to speak.”

The gatekeeper took offense at Tooyama’s attitude. His armor clinked as he approached Tooyama.

“…Naruhito, stop. They are Church Knight patrols. Unlike at the Guild, if we cause trouble, we will be restrained.”

“…Understood, Lazaar.”

Lazaar stopped Tooyama, who was about to approach the gatekeeper in return. At those words, Tooyama nodded and stopped accepting the fight.

Right, calm down, calm down. If he caused trouble every time he got a little irritated, there would be no end to it. These people had ethics only about at the level of Europe in a dark age full of beasts.

He, equipped with modern Nihon common sense and ethics, should be the one to yield. Yes, these people were animals, so he should be kind to them. Yes.

Thinking various things in his head, Tooyama devised logic to forgive the gatekeeper before him.

He was calming down. The procedure should have finished, so he was about to proceed forward to leave, when it happened.

“Hmph, well, fine. You fools are heading out hunting without knowing your place. You’ll die soon enough… Hm.”

The gatekeeper, grinning, held out his hand toward Tooyama and Lazaar.

With his palm facing up, his attitude was as though demanding that something be handed over.

“…What is it? No, what is it, sir? You finished checking the documents. We’re going through.”

“Amateur. You don’t know? You need to pay a passage fee and handling fee. Didn’t the Guild tell you?”

As if it were obvious, and with a smirking smile still pasted on his face, the gatekeeper declared it.

“…………”

Inside Tooyama’s head, a sensation of cold water spreading through his brain ran through him.

“…I have heard nothing of that. The Guild never explained that we had to pay money to the gatekeepers.”

It was a demand for a bribe, and one from a shitty race of people with a shitty reason.

“That’s too bad. Seems communication didn’t go well. Shall we ask the others around here? Hey, you lot! These adventurers want to go outside, but we need to collect handling fees, right?!”

At Lazaar’s protest, the gatekeeper laughed and called his companions.

“Ah, yeah. If they’re fourth-rank and not even in a party, they need a deposit. A deposit.”

“Yeah, that’s right. We gatekeepers are using our precious time for amateurs like you. Come on, honestly hand over what you should.”

The gatekeepers gathered to surround Tooyama and Lazaar. Though they were smirking, all of them held weapons.

Apparently, they were being treated like easy prey. Tooyama understood the situation.

“Ah, they’re doing it again. Hey, Vuil, our party is going out for the usual hunting, so we’re passing through.”

“Yeah, go earn some. Treat me next time.”

While leaving the surrounded Tooyama and Lazaar aside, a group passed straight through the gatekeepers. There were three of them, and since all of them were armed, they were probably in the same trade.

“…Hey, wait. Why are you letting them through? Not only did they not pay the deposit or passage fee you mentioned, you did not even check their application or adventurer badges.”

Seeing the adventurers pass smoothly through the gate, Lazaar raised his voice further.

“Huh? Those guys are fine. They’re a third-rank party, and they’re trusted. Even if we don’t check every application, the Guild handles it properly.”

Sloppy work and corruption. Those people and these gatekeepers probably had some sort of shared interest.

“…I see, so this is the structure. The Guild Master must be struggling quite a lot.”

The Guild Master’s efforts shown in that booklet unfortunately had not reached the lower levels.

The Church and the Guild likely were not aligned either.

Tooyama silently observed them.

Their equipment was fairly abundant, and they had numbers. Since Lazaar was also there, it would be difficult to slaughter them all head-on without injury. If he took too much time, there would be witnesses too.

Church patrols. Unlike the Crows he had dealt with yesterday, these were people on the system’s side. If he killed them head-on, he would be painted as the bad guy.

“…What a pain.”

“Huh? You say something? I don’t care either way. Passage fee for two is one silver coin. If you can’t pay, we won’t let you through.”

“Or do you want to go to jail for obstructing Church public duty? Hm? Either is fine with me.”

The gatekeepers kept smirking. Their faces completely looked down on them. To them, low-rank adventurers were apparently only that sort of existence.

“…Naruhito, let us go peacefully. There is no gain in making enemies of them.”

“…Yeah. Whew. Fine, I get it. I’ll pay. Sorry for taking up your time.”

Tooyama changed his method. Right, become an adult. An adult.

There was no helping it if he caused trouble here—

When Tooyama was about to lower his head to them, the gatekeeper put on an obvious smile at Tooyama’s attitude.

“Oh? You understand quickly. Right, right, you should’ve honestly paid from the start.”

“Hehe, if you were a woman, there’d be ways to let you through other than money, but for a Lizardonian and a black-haired man, there’s no way through except a silver coin.”

“Gyahahaha, oh, that country girl from the other day! Poor thing, come to think of it, we haven’t seen her for a week.”

“Isn’t that because you used her too much?”

“Idiot, by the end, the woman was enjoying it too!”

Vulgar laughter wrapped around Tooyama and Lazaar.

Faces of humans who likely could not understand, or even imagine, another person’s pain.

For an instant, Lazaar showed anger and nearly bared his fangs.

“…………………”

“?! ……………”

Tooyama silently raised his arm and stopped Lazaar. The faces of the laughing gatekeepers were reflected in Tooyama’s chestnut eyes.

The faces of humans born only on the strong side, the taking side. The faces of humans who would never oppose anyone stronger than themselves, and directed their childish attacks only at those weaker than themselves.

Crack. A sound echoed deep behind his molars, inside his temple.

They were the type of people Tooyama Naruhito hated most.

He changed his mind. Settling this peacefully and paying money were now both gone.

There was not a single coin to give to beasts. Tooyama smiled quietly.

“Haha, ah, right. Before I pay, let me ask one thing. What does your Church think of dragons?”

Hiding irritation and anger coiling like a snake behind a smile, Tooyama spoke naturally.

“Naruhito?”

Lazaar’s suspicious voice.

“Huh? What, dragons?”

“Who cares? Hurry up and pay, or we’ll haul you away.”

The gatekeepers responded in their own ways to Tooyama’s words.

Ping. Arrows appeared on their faces.

“No, no, I was just a little curious. The dragon and Guild Master were grumbling, you see. About people recently making pocket money at this East Gate without permission from the Guild or the Church.”

Speech Challenge. Tooyama’s tongue writhed. A bright red lie. The Guild Master had said no such thing at all.

“………………………Huh?”

“What did you just say?”

Even so, they reacted. They understood that their actions were shady. They understood that it would be bad if they were exposed.

That was why Tooyama’s murmur spread like poison.

“Gyaha, hey, adventurer, you’re way too bad at lying. There’s no way a small fry like you knows those people.”

One of the gatekeepers raised a high-pitched voice. At that voice, the surrounding gatekeepers also began smirking one by one.

“Yeah, haha, did you catch me? No, just a joke. A joke. Uh, it was one silver coin, right? Wait a bit. I’ll turn out what’s in my purse…”

Tooyama also joined their laughter and began smirking.

He took a leather pouch from his chest. He knew perfectly well that there was no more money inside.

However, that was inside the leather pouch.

“Oops, wrong one.”

Plop.

It slipped out of the overturned leather pouch and into Tooyama’s palm.

A golden dog tag. A plate, the proof above all proof that he had killed a dragon.

“…Hah? Hey, you, that…”

One of the gatekeepers’ eyes widened. Apparently, he understood at a glance what it was.

“Ah, don’t mind it. Sorry, sorry, this one’s wrong. It’s gold, but it isn’t money. Man, I see, I see. Passage fee, huh. No, don’t mind me. That kind of thing is important, right? We’ll be dealing with each other for a long time from now on. I’ve properly remembered your faces.”

Tooyama deliberately rolled the golden adventurer badge in his palm.

The gatekeepers’ eyes were nailed to it.

“…Wait. Wait, wait. That thing you’re holding, is that… a golden adventurer badge?”

“Ah, haha, no, no, it has to be fake. Hey, right? I mean, huh? Earlier, you said the dragon and Guild Master were talking about us—”

Their voices clearly began to rise.

A worthless bluff from a fourth-rank adventurer was an everyday thing for them.

To cover up bribes, adventurers would use poor lies and pathetic threats. Hurting such adventurers, mainly new adventurers who did not know how things worked, stripping them of money and goods, and sometimes making them pay with something else, was their side income.

But today was different. They began to feel that the robed adventurer before them was clearly different somehow.

“No, sorry, sorry, that’s why it was a joke. A joke. …For the Guild Master too, anyone doing things that could crack the relationship between the Adventurers’ Guild and the Church would be an eyesore. As for the dragon, she simply kills people in a fit of temper. She doesn’t seem like the type to like bribes much.”

“What are you talking about? If you’re teasing us with boring jokes, you won’t get away for free.”

“H-hey, wait, wait. That’s unmistakably a Tower-Class Adventurer Badge. That gold color. It’s the same kind as the Knight Captain’s, isn’t it?!”

“D-don’t be stupid?! It has to be fake! Hey, adventurer, lend me that!”

One gatekeeper could not endure that sense of discomfort, no, fear.

He forcibly snatched the golden adventurer badge Tooyama was rolling in his palm.

“Ah.”

“With this toy, you think you can scare—”

Tooyama opened his mouth blankly.

And the gatekeeper who had grinned suddenly rolled his eyes back in the middle of his words and collapsed to the ground without even breaking his fall.

“Hey?! What happened?! He collapsed!”

“…It’s real. A real Tower-Class Adventurer Badge. If anyone other than the person herself or someone recognized by her touches it, disaster happens.”

“H-hey, wait. Then this guy, don’t tell me, really…”

“…………Black hair, Lizardonian… Hey?! The adventurer slave who killed the Hoarding Dragon-sama, the one mentioned in the Church bulletin! They were also a pair: a black-haired one and a Lizardonian slave!”

Agitation spread among the gatekeepers.

Tooyama’s tongue entangled them.

“H-hey, hey! Adventurer, take off your hood. Hurry.”

“Here you go.”

As the gatekeeper said, Tooyama lowered the hood of his robe. With a face like a cunning carnivorous beast, he looked over the frightened petty villains.

“Black hair, chestnut eyes… You, no, are you perhaps—really…”

“Hehehehehehehehe, before that, let me ask. Are you enemies of the Guild and the dragon?”

A distorted laugh, precise words.

“Huh?”

They became poison and ate into the gatekeepers.

“The Adventurers’ Guild is currently trying to expose those involved in bribes and corruption in order to advance systemic reform. The dragon also does not look kindly on lowly bugs crawling at her feet. Unfortunately, it seems these bugs have been recognized as eyesores and enemies by the Guild and the dragon.”

“Hi…”

“He’s foaming at the mouth. Poor thing. I’ll be taking this back.”

Tooyama recovered the plate from the gatekeeper who was rolling his eyes back and twitching, then continued speaking.

“…He can touch it safely… Because it’s the Hoarding Dragon’s adventurer badge.”

Slide. One of them, one of the gatekeepers, began backing away.

“Apparently, those bugs are rather cunning and do not easily let their tails be caught. So, soon, a decoy investigation will apparently be carried out using a collaborator with enough ability to be recognized by a dragon, while also being a newcomer who looks like easy prey in the Adventurers’ Guild… Ah, well, it is a joke. All of it is just a joke. Gatekeepers.”

“Ah, uh…”

“But well, this collaborator is also not serious. He does not necessarily move in step with the Guild or the dragon. In fact, he does not want to get involved in troublesome matters. So, yes, this collaborator is probably thinking this: there are no bugs among the gatekeepers who demand bribes. It was merely a rumor. Ah, that sort of report would settle everything peacefully, though.”

Tooyama looked at each of the gatekeepers.

The relaxed smiles had already vanished from all of them.

“So, what was it again? Uh, passage fee? How much do I need?”

“N-no. Nothing. We confirmed the documents. Have a good hunt…”

After those words, the gatekeepers all lowered their heads at once.

Lazaar gave a bitter smile, lowered his head, and began passing through.

However, Tooyama stared at the gatekeepers and did not move.

One, two, three, four.

Four people. Even while lowering their heads to him, he found four people with dangerous eyes.

He would leave no grudges. He intended to settle it peacefully, but this was still the most certain way.

“Naruhito?”

Lazaar called out to Tooyama, who was not moving from that spot.

“…Yes, thanks. Good work. …Don’t worry. All of it is a joke. I’m coming now, Lazaar.”

At last, Tooyama began walking.

Inside his robe, in a position no one could see, he quietly took the broken blade out of his own body.

“Ah, yes.”

“…Lazaar, were there any people around that area other than us?”

“No. Other than the people who passed straight through earlier, there were none.”

“I see. Then that’s fine.”

Tooyama and Lazaar passed through the gate.

They passed through the tunnel of the thick wall. Beyond the light of the lit lanterns, they could see an exit filled with sunlight.

“What are you planning to do?”

Lazaar tilted his head.

That was when it happened.

From far away, from the tunnel entrance behind Tooyama and Lazaar, loud, filthy screams were heard.

Death cries.

“No, it’s already over.”

He put away the blade.

It was his first time using it with a time delay, but he clearly felt a definite response.

“…Was it necessary to go that far?”

“Sorry. Something about what they said about women pissed me off for no reason…”

“…I will not ask for the details.”

“Yeah, that helps. It was just a few bugs who were better off dead disappearing from this world. It would have been troublesome if they got weirdly involved with us later.”

“…Indeed, a few of them were glaring at you. Killing intent was leaking from them too. It seems the lower levels of the Church are rotten.”

“Yeah. I don’t have a hobby of disinfecting filth, but if it splashes toward me, that’s another matter. Proper cleaning is the duty of a decent person.”

As he spoke, Tooyama thought.

Since coming here, his resistance toward killing had clearly grown thinner and thinner.

It was a sensation like being quietly and coldly drunk. He thought for a moment and let out a small breath.

Well, whatever. They did not seem like people whose deaths would trouble anyone.

“All right, let’s reset and go, Laza—”

He lost his words.

Beyond the tunnel, a world spread out.

Blue sky. A blue sky unseen in the modern age, one that made him feel like he would lose his sense of up and down if he kept looking up at it.

The wind seemed to swim over the grassland. The pale green earth stirred every time the wind blew.

Overwhelming nature and world. A wide, wide outside world spread beyond the wall.

“Heh, what’s wrong, Naruhito? You look as though it is your first time seeing the outside of a city.”

“H-hehe, shut up. I’m just a little hungry.”

Suppressing the hunger and dizziness caused by the backlash of using Mist, Tooyama took a deep breath of the plain air stretching before him.

Let’s start work.

He breathed in the scent of greenery and exhaled. The blue sky stretched wide, and clouds drifted.

“What a nice view…”

Before this natural sight, those people’s lives were like trash. How tiny it was that he had taken their lives.

After taking about three steps over the ground, Tooyama immediately forgot the faces of the gatekeepers he had killed.

Ping.