「……Was that okay?」

On the way back from the Levisor residence, Rei asked Elena as he stroked Set’s head as he walked beside them.

At Rei’s question, Elena gave a smile and nodded to indicate it wasn’t a problem.

「I realised it after meeting him in person. He’s a typical power grabber who only cares about their own interests. He’s just like a lot of Aristocratic and Royalist nobles……」

Rei couldn’t deny Elena’s words as he had seen many such nobles before.

Although some time had passed since their meal at the Levisor residence, it was still evening. A bright red sunset could be seen in the sky.

Even though it was evening……or rather, because it was still evening, Exil was still wrapped in a hot air.

「It’s still hot. Should we have taken the carriage back?」

Elena gave a vexed glance towards the setting sun.

After leaving the Levisor residence, they could have taken same carriage back, the one the adventurer had used to pick them up in front of the dungeon.

However, she couldn’t really do that after just refusing Schaffner’s request without a second though. As a result, they were walking their way through the city.

The Levisor residence was in Exil’s east, so they were just walking straight west. However, Exil was still a city with a population of over 200,000 and was very large. Rei judged that it wouldn’t be possible for them to return to the inn before the sun went down if they went to the guild first at their current rate. He turned to glance at a public carriage as he spoke.

「Why don’t we get on a carriage?」

「Hmm, I don’t mind……what about Set? That’s probably……no, it looks like it will be okay.」

Looking at a carriage moving in front of them, Elena agreed with Rei with a wry smile.

That was because there were Big Boars and Bicorns walking behind the carriage.

They were probably monsters that were either tamed or summoned by the person inside the carriage.

(If they were summoned monsters, they could have been sent back to where they came from, so it’s probably a tamed monster.)

That was what Elena though.

However, while some of Elena’s thoughts were correct, there were other points she was wrong on.

Summoning magic consumed magic power not only on summoning, but also when returning a summoned monster to its original location. In other words, keeping the consumption of magic power in mind, it was usually better to keep a summoned monster summoned unless there was a big problem. It saved on magic power and the monster could respond immediately in an emergency situation.

……Of course, in that situation, you would need to pay for food and stables for the summoned monster, so it ultimately depended on the judgement of the summoner.

Anyway, by paying just a bit more, Set was allowed to follow behind the carriage while Rei and Elena boarded it before heading to the guild.

Other monsters following behind the carriage were scared of Set at first, but as tamed monsters in a labyrinth city, they soon got used to it.

That said, their movements were still a little awkward as it was still hard to get used to having a Griffon close by.

 

 

Fortunately, they were able to ride the public carriage to the guild before the sun completely set.

However, as it was evening, the guild was crowded with adventurers returning from the dungeon, selling materials and magic stones to the guild, and collecting rewards for various other requests.

Since Rei’s group usually went to the guild when there were very few people, while many people knew his name and title, Crimson, not as many people had seen him before.

As for Elena, fortunately, her identity of the General Princess had been hidden by the guild and the higher ups of Exil, the Silva, Marschel, and Levisor families.

That said, as there were people from Exil who had participated in the spring war as mercenaries, there naturally were people who recognised Elena. Even so, the reason why Elena’s true identity didn’t spread was because many of them were afraid of what might happen if they carelessly disclosed the identity of a duke’s daughter or had been warned by the guild.

At any rate, they headed straight for the guild purchase counter. Adventurers who knew Rei were surprised by his presence while those seeing him for the first time quickly spread his name around in a chain reaction.

Even though there were a lot of guild staff to deal with the rush hour period, they still couldn’t handle everyone immediately, causing queues to form. Several adventurers approached Rei as he lined up at the back of one such queue……

「Hey, idiot! Don’t do that!」

Other adventurers who knew them rushed over to stop them.

The smiles on the faces of the adventurers approaching Rei showed that they were up to no good.

「What, this Crimson, you think he’s a strong guy? He’s just a kid. Considering that, the woman with him is beyond what he deserves, we’ll just deal with him in a bit.」

「No, no, just stop! He might look like a kid, but there’s no doubt his strength is real.」

「What? You’re scared of a kid?」

「Yeah, I’m scared. I heard it from someone who participated in the spring war. There’s a rumour that he burned the entire vanguard of the Bestir Empire. In addition……this is still a rumour, but he might be involved with the Silva family.」

「……Seriously?……」

While the adventurers watching Rei were talking like that, a male guild staff in his forties approached Rei and Elena as he called out to them.

「Elena-sama, Rei-sama, Vosk-sama is waiting for you in the same room as before. Please go upstairs as soon as you can.」

His voice was loud enough to be heard by all the adventurers watching them.

(No, that was probably his intention.)

Guessing the guild staff’s intentions, Rei turned to look at Elena before they both nodded.

For those who knew who Elena was, such as the guild, it was hard for them to prevent an unsuspecting adventurer from trying to mess with Rei and offend Elena as a result.

At the same time, they couldn’t reveal Elena’s identity as long as she requested them to hide it. The result was that they had to tell those in the surroundings that Rei and Elena had a close relationship with the Silva family.

(Well, I don’t mind if all this fuss goes away.)

Rei turned to the guild staff as the noise from a few second ago diminished notably, especially the adventurer who had been planning to mess with them, they backed off as they didn’t want the Silva family to have their eyes on them.

「I understand. Elena?」

「Mm, let’s go.」

Nodding in response to Rei’s question, the two of them lef the queue together and went up to the second floor of the guild.

As they climbed the stairs, Rei looked over at Elena walking next to him.

「Today is quite the day to meet with so many higher ups in Exil, isn’t it?」

「No, not really. It was probably the Silva family……or rather, Vosk, who wanted to see us first and had been waiting in the guild where we had met previously. I think it’s more accurate to say that Schaffner Levisor had sensed this and was trying to interfere.」

Rei was a little surprised at Elena’s response.

However, it was true that an adventurer serving the Levisor family had contacted them as soon as they left the dungeon, and even though he had been polite, he had basically put them onto the carriage without any means of refusal.

「I see, that makes sense. However, do you think selling him magic stones was just an excuse then?」

Rei asked Elena as they walked side by side, but a response came from someone he wasn’t expecting.

「No, I don’t know what their purpose is, but it is true that the Levisor and Marschel families are competing furiously to collect magic stones. Furthermore, due to the difference in their strengths in this area, the Levisor family is on the weaker side, so they probably requested you to sell them your magic stones in order to try to deal with that. Perhaps he was trying to interfere with Vosk-sama while collecting more magic stones at the same time.」

The reply came from a person standing in front of the door Rei and Elena were heading towards.

The man was in his late twenties to early thirties, had sharp eyes, and had green hair swept to the back, giving a strong impression of cleverness to people that saw him.

Looking at his clothes, he was wearing a butler uniform. It was easy to guess who he was.

It felt somewhat out of place for a butler to show up in the adventurers guild though.

The man must have noticed Rei and Elena looking at him. He place his hand on his chest and gave a graceful bow.

「Nice to meet you, Elena-sama, Rei-sama. My name is Sanctions, I am the head butler of the Silva family. Thank you for accepting the invitation from my master, Vosk-sama. Vosk-sama is already waiting for you inside, so please come in.」

「……I understand. Let’s do that. Rei, let’s go.」

「Okay.」

Giving a brief nod, Elena approached the door with Rei. Sanctions gave a bow before quickly returning to his original position and knocking on the door.

「Vosk-sama, Elena-sama and Rei-sama are here.」

「Let them in.」

Hearing the voice from inside, Sanctions opened the door and stood to the side to let Rei and Elena pass.

Walking past him, Rei and Elena entered the meeting room and saw Vosk looking through some documents.

Something felt wrong seeing the giant man, that would normally be swinging around a huge claymore, reading and signing documents. Rei spoke up.

「So, what did you want to meet with us for?」

「Before that, there’s a few questions I’d like to ask you……」

Vosk interrupted his question. Throwing the papers he was reading aside, he turned to look at Rei and Elena.

Was his sharp gaze because he had been working hard on paperwork or was it because Rei and Elena had been late to return to the guild?

As Rei thought about that, Vosk asked Rei with a keen eye.

「It seems you were called over by the old man from the Levisor family. ……How did that go?」

When asked with a carnivorous like smile, Rei shrugged his shoulders as he took down the hood he was wearing.

「It’s not so easy to talk about someone else’s information. What’s the matter?」

Was he disappointed by Rei’s response or was it what he had expected? Vosk snorted as he smiled like a predator.

That said, since Sanctions had heard them talking about it in the hallway, there wasn’t much point in hiding it.

「Hmph, well, I didn’t expect you talk about it easily. But, it’s not that hard to guess. It’s either about giving him priority in selling magic stones or asking you to harrass me.」

Did he hear what they had been talking about in the hallway or was his intuition sharper than what his appearance seemed to indicate? Either way, Vosk gave a snort as if he didn’t care about what Schaffner was planning.

「Well, I don’t care about that old man anyway. All he can do is harass me and old lady Pree. At the very least, he’s doing his job of governing Exil. ……So, onto the main subject. You guys cleared the 11th floor today, right?」

「Huh? Yeah, well.」

Rei was surprised by the sudden change in the topic, but nodded as he had nothing to hide in particular regarding that.

However, this seemed to be Vosk’s main topic. He looked at Rei with a sharp gaze.

「So, did you notice anything strange on the 11th floor? If you noticed anything at all, please tell me the details.」

「……What happened?」

Rei asked back without thinking as he felt something akin to blood lust from Vosk’s eyes as he looked at him.

Looking at Rei, Vosk eventually judged that their discussion wouldn’t get anywhere if he hid the circumstances regarding it. Exhaling lightly, Vosk spoke.

「An abnormal species was found on the 11th floor. Several of my younger brothers were attacked.」

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