First Adventurers’ Guild (Illegal Intrusion)

“That’s my request! You slowpoke!!”

“What did you say?! I got my hands on it first! You can go lick one of those stale requests over there!!”

“Okaaay, please don’t push! Early-morning requests are being accepted at counters five through twelve. Don’t push! Don’t push—didn’t I tell you not to push?! You damn gobies!!”

“Gyaaaaa, U-san snapped!!”

“You stupid adventurers!! Take responsibility, all of you!”

Morning came early in the adventure city Agatra.

It was the logistics center of the Empire’s Southern Territory, and also one of the Empire’s foremost production areas for monster materials, making it a vital location for the imperial economy.

The scramble for request forms posted in the Guild tavern the instant the morning sun rose was something of a local specialty.

“Man, all the good-paying requests are already gone.”

“I heard bandits showed up again in Sugal Village. Should we take this request?”

“Hmm, their methods are too cunning. They might be Kingdom spies. Smells fishy. Pass, pass.”

“Then I guess we’ll cheerfully clean the sewers again today…”

“Ahh, I wish we had a life where we got paid just for waiting underground like the first-rankers.”

“Idiot, you can’t subjugate high-ranking monsters, can you? First-rankers are monsters in human form who can finally become that after killing monsters like wyverns, giants, and legendary species one-on-one. Plain-field culling suits people like us.”

“Then what are the Tower-Class ones?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Monsters beyond monsters.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess ordinary people should live like ordinary people. I’d like to take a good-paying request once in a while. Well then, today we’ll cheerfully hunt monsters on the plains again.”

The second-rank adventurers, who were relatively skilled and could hunt monsters while keeping a safety margin, casually enjoyed talk of work while picking at sausages, roasted potatoes, and the like.

That day should have been an utterly ordinary day for the Adventurers’ Guild.

“Damn it, those second-rankers are leisurely eating breakfast…”

“Idiot, they’ll hear you. We managed to get a herb-gathering request on the plains, so we’re lucky today, aren’t we?”

Wind suddenly blew inside the room.

“What’s this wind?”

“Aaah, my request form?!”

“What is this?! Hey, isn’t someone’s ‘skill’ going out of control?!”

“P-please calm down! Skill use is not permitted inside the Guild!”

The whirling wind snatched away request forms, and adventurers fought over them.

The skirts of the Guild receptionists flipped up, and the male adventurers stretching their noses at the sight were smacked by their female companions.

It was the usual scene. However, the thing that appeared with the wind in the next instant was clearly a relic.

“Damn elf!! Wait, huh? Where… am I?”

““““Huh?””””

The man who appeared with the wind made every person in the Adventurers’ Guild freeze.

……

…

The moment the wind vanished and his vision returned, Tooyama was captivated by the sight of that place.

“—Where is this?”

He was inside a building. Wooden walls and wooden floors. Animal-fur rugs were spread all over, and round tables and long tables were packed together.

In the center of the room, something like a large torch burned red, and around it meat, vegetables, fish, and such were skewered and grilled.

“…A tavern?”

Its structure was exactly like the taverns in Babel Island’s pleasure district. And more than anything, the people around him.

All of them were uniformly equipped with some kind of weapon. Swords, axes, hammers, bows.

“…Huh?”

“W-what is this guy? Where did he come from?”

“A skill? But he’s wearing slave clothes.”

“Eh? Black hair?”

“A human, with black hair and chestnut eyes…”

Clatter. Plop.

A sound. Among the armed people surrounding and staring at Tooyama, it was the sound of one of them dropping her weapon.

Everyone looked at the woman who had dropped her weapon, lost strength in her legs, and sat down on the floor.

Tooyama recognized that woman.

That wagon, the dog-men Tooyama had disposed of, and the small, beautiful beast-eared girls who had been with them—one of them.

“…It’s him.”

“Huh? El, what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s him!! Him!! Black hair! Chestnut! The slave who killed the Dragon Shrine Maiden-sama!! The slave who ruined our party!! It’s hiiiiiiim!!”

“Ah, you’re the cat-eared one from that wagon back then—”

“…Well, I’m not suspicious or anything. Um, how are you?”

“Hey! Hey, hey, El! That wasn’t a lie just now, was it?! This guy’s the slave that Dragon Shrine Maiden is looking for, right!”

“Yes, yes! As if I could forget! Because of this guy, because of him and that Lizardonian, my sister… everyone…”

“Hey, over there, did they just say slave or something?”

“What’s this, what’s this, trouble? It’s a fight, a fight!”

“Hey, isn’t that El? You know, the survivor of the Lycans that got wiped out the other day…”

“Oh, those idiots who wasted the big chance from that Dragon Shrine Maiden? Gyahaha, what is it, what is it? Are you gonna make us laugh again?”

“Damn it, they’re gathering one after another… Uh, Miss Cat-Ears over there. Thanks for back then. But what’s with that victim act of yours?”

“Shut up!! Slave!! Everyone, listen!! This guy, this guy, this guy!! The slave the whole Empire is searching for! The slave Dragon Shrine Maiden is searching for! The slave worth ten thousand imperial gold coins!”

“Whoa, that makes me sound like the four-hundred-billion man. Doesn’t feel bad.”

“Shut your mouth, slave. How did you appear in this Guild? Are you a skill-user?”

“Wait, wait, wait. Between that damn elf just now and you, stop having conversations with words I don’t know, you socially inept bastards. Also, baldy, don’t point your weapon at me so happily. It’ll scare me into wanting to kill you.”

“Huh?! What’s an adventurer slave like you saying?”

“H-hey, baldy, wait. That slave killed a dragon, right? Isn’t it dangerous to provoke him too much?”

“Idiot!! Look at him!! Those shabby clothes and that filthy, unkempt hair! He still has shackles on his arms, doesn’t he?! We can do this! Right here! Also, I’m not bald! I’m shaved-headed!”

“Y-yeah, the baldy’s right. Somehow, he really doesn’t look strong at all. H-hey, isn’t this our chance…? We might be able to graduate from being bottom-tier adventurers who spend our whole lives dredging sewers.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Don’t do it with just you guys. Let me in too. Look, I drew my weapon, I drew my weapon. If we capture this slave, that means I helped too, right?!”

“Rive, what are we doing?”

“Jal, let’s leave the Guild immediately. My skill reacted. This place is too dangerous. Let’s find anyone we know, tell them, and get out.”

“Got it. Heaven help us, heaven help us. Those third- and fourth-rankers drawing their weapons, and some second-rankers too, huh? Even with that many, it’s no good?”

“No good. Not even worth discussing. We’re getting out before we get caught in it.”

Tooyama listened carefully. The sensible-looking ones who had been hanging around this tavern-like place were quickly leaving the area.

Good. Those guys looked troublesome.

Compared to them—

“…You lot seem easy. Are you eating properly?”

“Huh?”

“What’s with this guy!”

“H-hey, someone capture him quickly! I-if he gets away, th-that would be such a waste.”

Scrawny. Bald, fat, potbellied.

He could tell by looking at their builds. They probably did not eat anything decent. Just fat, or just carbohydrates, and then alcohol.

They did not have the bodies of people who fought. Their weapons were not well maintained either.

Sword tips were chipped, and bindings on grips were fraying.

He could kill them.

Five of them. Before the others who seemed decently capable entered the fray, he could instantly kill one.

Besides, he did not sense killing intent from these people.

“Now then, what should I do with you—”

Just as Tooyama was organizing his combat thoughts in his head,

“Kill him!!”

“Kill him! Kill this slave!”

The cat-eared girl began screaming hysterically. There was no trace left of the timid way she had seemed when he first saw her.

“H-hey, El, calm down. There’s no point unless we capture this guy alive, right?”

“I don’t care! I don’t care about that! Because of him, my sister was eaten alive by monsters! If he hadn’t run away! If he hadn’t incited the other slaves! Everything would have gone well! Why? Why is a slave like you alive while my sister died?!”

“Well, that’s because you guys made me a slave. Hmm, I see. So a lot of them died. Well, if people of your level of training make a racket in a place with that many monsters, of course it’d get out of control.”

The naturally brutal Tooyama replied to the hysterical cat-eared girl. He did not mean much harm.

For an instant, the cat-eared woman opened her mouth blankly.

“Ah, aaaah?! I’ll kill you, kill you, kill kill kill kill kill!! Everyone! Why are you just standing there?! Hurry up and kill him!”

“Ah, no, killing him is kind of…”

“Y-yeah, the instructions from the Guild are to capture him too.”

“Th-that’s right, El-chan. If we don’t capture him, we won’t get the money.”

The other adventurers had begun pulling back at the hysterical woman’s extreme change.

Huh, maybe I can get out of this without fighting. Just as Tooyama began thinking something slightly naïve—

“Just do it! Kill him! Whoever kills him, I’ll do anything for you! I’ll give you anything you want, even my body! I’ll let you do me, so kill hiiiiiiim!!”

“…El, is that true?”

“H-hey, did you hear that? The surviving sister said anything.”

“C-can we d-do it? Seriously?”

“E-El-tan and m-me, b-buhihihihihi.”

Mwaah.

Disgusting killing intent swelled all at once.

Desire. The adventurers who had been stimulated in what Tooyama valued so much lit the fire of lust in their eyes all at once.

“H-hey, is that really okay, El?”

“It’s fine! I’ll do anything! You were always trying to hit on me, weren’t you? I don’t care anymore! As long as he dies!”

Even while hysterical, that cat-eared girl certainly had an appearance that stimulated the opposite sex.

Glossy skin, slender legs wrapped in equipment like tights, and a design where a little of her thighs peeked out would certainly appeal to men. From her thin equipment, the curves of her body were also clearly visible.

“Why? Why did my sister and everyone die, while someone like you! Someone like you!”

The adventurers stared as though licking over the body of the cat-eared woman who kept screaming, then looked at Tooyama.

Their eyes were easy to read, as if saying, If I kill that—

“…Hopeless. You’re all hopeless.”

However, Tooyama was plainly disappointed.

That desire was no good. Something born from being egged on by someone else in the heat of the moment was nothing more than a mere impulse.

“You lot really are no good. It can’t be helped if you feel desire for a woman, but what you have isn’t beautiful. You’re just having your instincts stirred up. You’re no different from animals.”

Dun-dun. Along with a low drumbeat, an arrow appeared over the screaming cat-eared woman.

‘Ah, I see. Well, I honestly don’t care much this time.’

“…There are a lot of them.”

After the cat-eared woman’s reward statement, the people surrounding Tooyama had swollen to about twice as many.

Some female adventurers left the place as if saying they could not go along with this, and the other sensible-looking ones had already disappeared.

The uniformed people who had been plentiful around what looked like counters were no longer visible.

“I guess I’ll use it.”

As expected, slaughtering this many people while unarmed would be tough. Tooyama would never again hold anything back.

Quietly, he began spreading the mist. To kill with certainty.

“Hey, let’s all rush him at once. It doesn’t matter what happened with a dragon. With this many of us, we can kill him.”

“H-hey, El, when you say kill him, does only the first guy to kill him get the reward? Huh?”

“Fine, I’ll take care of everyone. If you tear up his corpse, I’ll do anything for all of you! So hurry!”

“All riiiiight! You heard that, everyone! Let’s do hiiiiim!!”

Wooooooooh!!

The fools, stirred up by shallow impulses, began making a racket.

This was it.

Tooyama deployed Kiriyaiba forward all at once, so that it would not affect him and would kill only his enemies.

“Just die, slave.”

The cat-eared woman laughed while surrounded by the men, her face certain of victory.

Idiot. You’re the one who’s going to die. Tooyama adjusted the density of the mist so that the cat-eared woman would die first—

“Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my. I hear that my words echo throughout the Empire, and that even beggars obey my commands, but it seems those here are not human after all.”

“—Ah.”

“Huh?”

“Ba, ah, eh?”

The air cowered.

Clink, clink.

The sound of metal overlapping.

People naturally began, one by one, to bend their knees and lower their heads.

The lower-ranked adventurers, mostly third- and fourth-rankers, who had been sending desire toward the cat-eared woman and killing intent toward Tooyama, began crawling on the ground one by one.

Every one of them trembled, and every one of them pressed their head to the ground hard enough to draw blood.

“Now then, I thought I heard the voice of a female cat. It seemed to be chirping something amusing.”

It was a woman.

Her luxurious golden hair extended to her waist. That abundant gold rippled as though lit by a shimmering heat haze. For some reason, only one side of her bangs was long enough to hide one eye.

“I certainly said to search for the slave. Search. I did not say to kill him. Search. For. Him.”

“Ah. Ah, ah…”

She was tall, with long legs. She wore leather armor consisting only of a cramped-looking breastplate that exposed her navel and made no attempt to hide her proportions.

On her legs and waist, she wore skirt-like armor adorned with golden designs.

With one hand on her absurdly narrow waist, the woman stopped.

She stopped near the cat-eared woman, who was trembling and unable to move.

“Now, it smells. The smell of a female cat in heat. Come, chirp for me. I am searching for the owner of that cry from earlier that said to kill him. Come now, chirp, female cat.”

A blue eye, the one not hidden by her bangs, looked down at the cat-eared woman.

The cat-eared woman’s face turned deathly pale, and even so, she met that eye with her own.

“Meow…”

Foam bubbled from her mouth like a crab’s, and she collapsed. It seemed she had fainted.

“Hmph, boring. But it seems her life was prolonged. If she had spoken even one more word, I would have burned off that head.”

The only ones still standing in this place were Tooyama and that blonde woman.

“…!?”

The air was heavy. The blonde woman looked at Tooyama. Just that alone made the core of his body go numb and heavy.

That sensation was something he had felt in the dungeon, and in that so-called Tower. When facing a creature at a higher stage than himself. Most recently, it had been that armored—

“Truly, I searched for you. Ah, I searched. I truly searched. I, as though I were a young child, sought and searched for you.”

“…Huh?”

The woman smiled softly.

If the sun held affection for a person, perhaps it would smile like that. That was the kind of smile it was.

“It throbbed. Every time I slept, it throbbed. The wound you carved into me, the fear you planted in me, the eye socket you pierced. Kakakaka. Ah, truly, truly, pleasantly lonely nights continued.”

“…A warning. Don’t come any closer to me. I don’t think you can tell, but you’re already within my range—”

“Ah, kaka, that? I already remember it. Hmm. Ah, just as you said, I made use of it next time.”

“What?”

The instant Tooyama asked back, the woman’s blue eye shone.

Fwoosh. The air burned. Only for an instant.

Flames ran through the surrounding air in a flash, and by the time he realized it—

“No way. This is the second time today.”

Kiriyaiba, the Kiriyaiba he had spread through the air, had been instantly burned away. There was no sensation left. Kiriyaiba would not activate.

“Kaka. There is much I want to talk about with you. There is much I want to discuss. Now then, shall we return?”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. This makes no sense. W-what is this situation?! How did you—Kiriyaiba—no, why do you know about it?!”

“Is it not obvious? I was killed by it. Ah, it was a rare experience. I praise you for it. You truly were a splendid hunter.”

With a full-faced smile, the woman approached again.

Tooyama began to panic.

He understood at a glance. Her build, her way of walking.

This one was far too dangerous.

He had not even a one-in-ten-thousand chance in close combat. For some reason, the trick behind his trump card, Kiriyaiba, had been exposed, and it had been neutralized by an incomprehensible method.

“Who the hell are you, seriously… Hm?”

Even as he panicked, his combat thoughts continued spinning. They reached an impossible possibility, yet the one with the highest probability.

“What is it? Do not be so afraid. It is no trouble, come closer. Kaka, well, even if you do not come, I shall come to you.”

“That way of speaking, the way you walk, your height… That pressure, Kiriyaiba, made use of it next time? No, impossible. Because I did it that thoroughly. I-impossible.”

“Ah, that finishing blow was effective. Kakaka. When I told Mother, she took quite a liking to you. For some reason, Father sympathized with you, though. Kaka, merely remembering it is truly amusing.”

Rustle.

The woman lifted her bangs, revealing the eye that had been hidden.

“Ah… No way, seriously, seriously…”

He understood everything when he saw that woman’s eye.

The sensation of the knife surfaced in his palm.

A wound. The woman’s one eye had been sealed by a wound. As though it had been stabbed by a blade.

“…Don’t tell me you’re—”

At Tooyama’s words, the woman once again placed a hand over her mouth and laughed happily.

“Ah, I truly wanted to see you. Hunter who killed me, human who surpassed me. My beloved mate.”

“Mate…?”

“Mm, is that not a suitable word for humans? Hmm, in that case, yes.”

The woman stopped, placed a hand on her cheek, and twisted her neck.

Then she nodded as if something had occurred to her.

Her cheeks reddened slightly.

“My husband, I have come to take you home.”

The sun smiled at Tooyama Naruhito.