"Oh, Eliza!"
Amy spotted the woman and called her name, and at almost the same moment, the woman known as Eliza noticed Amy and broke into a smile. After giving me a quick bow, she immediately made her way over to Amy.
"Sorry—I'll apologize on Eliza's behalf..."
"Well, it's nothing unusual..." In response to Albert's apology, I shrugged it off as though it were simply business as usual. And honestly, it was. Grandpa and I had spent so many years living in the countryside and wandering from place to place that even when close friends acted this way, we didn't think much of it. Well, over the past few years, there was no denying that a certain family had made us more accustomed to putting up with such things...
While Albert and I were going through our usual exchange, Cain and Lion had been guided by Aina into the dining hall, where they'd taken their seats and were enjoying tea and pastries. Another perfectly typical scene.
Honestly, going through this ritual every single time was getting tedious, and Albert could just act
boldly
like the other two. But there were
reasons
why he couldn't.
As it happened, those "reasons" were that Eliza was Albert's fiancée. In other words, Eliza would one day become the future lady of the Duke Sanga household, and her behavior could directly reflect on the family's reputation—so Albert had to offer an apology, even if it was purely for form's sake. I'd once asked him whether the three of them (Cain, Lion, and Eliza) couldn't just relax when no one else was watching, but his answer was, "If I get too used to letting my guard down, I'm afraid I'll slip up somewhere that matters. So I'd rather stay on my toes while I still can."
When Duke Sanga and Marquis Samons heard about this, they gave mild warnings—"You're too wound up" and "You're pushing too hard"—but apparently didn't press the matter any further. Grandpa, on the other hand, had said something like "If you're going to fail, better to do it while you're still young," so maybe he actually believed that. Eliza, by contrast, seemed to have more confidence in separating public from private than Albert did, and didn't appear to worry about it. In fact, whenever she ran into the King or Maria at our place, she never lost her composure, even when caught completely off guard.
"Amy, you should really just become my sister already."
"Um..." This was how Eliza always went about
recruiting
Amy. The reason she was so fond of Amy came down to an incident about two years ago. While Amy had been shopping in the Royal Capital, she'd accidentally wandered down a back alley and been set upon by kidnappers. At that moment, Eliza happened to be passing nearby, sensed something was wrong, rushed in, and together they fought the attackers off.
Eliza had taken a liking to Amy and tried to have her adopted into her family as a foster daughter, but when her fiancé Albert and her parents—who knew about me—found out, they'd been furious.
Still, since Amy herself didn't seem to mind, Eliza kept inviting her at every opportunity. Eliza, unlike Albert, appeared confident in her ability to separate public from private matters and didn't seem to worry about it. In fact, whenever she ran into the King or Maria at our place, she never let it show, even when caught by surprise.
As it turned out, the men who'd tried to kidnap Amy were beaten to a pulp by Eliza and Amy themselves, the three little ones—Ii-chan, Shii-chan, and Ku-chan—and the Golems I'd posted as guards. When the soldiers who'd heard the commotion came rushing over, they couldn't even tell at first who the real criminals were.
"Eliza, cut it out! You're making Amy uncomfortable!"
"Hmm~... You're not bothered, are you, dear?"
"Ahahahaha..."
The invitations always follow the same routine—Albert scolds Eliza, and that's where it ends. Amy could just flat-out refuse, but since she doesn't dislike Eliza and is in fact quite fond of her, things always turn out like this.
Now, to introduce Eliza: she's a noble of the same age as Albert and the others, also a graduate of the same academy. Her real name is Elizabet von Sylphild. Her family is an earl household belonging to the Royalist Faction, and she is the eldest daughter.
At the academy, despite being a gifted student who always ranked among the top in magic classes, Eliza's overall ranking was apparently about the same as Lion's, which she apparently wasn't happy about. To be clear, this wasn't because Eliza was terrible at everything other than magic—it was because Lion had been skilled enough in
physical combat and such
to completely overturn her disadvantages in magic studies and academics at the academy. That was the reason.
The Sylphild earl family was originally founded by someone who excelled in wind magic, it seems,
and as for the Sylphild family,
descendants who carry their bloodline, regardless of degree, tend to excel at wind magic compared to other types of magic. Among them, Eliza was apparently not very skilled with wind magic but instead excelled at thunder magic, making her a rare figure in the history of the Sylphild family. As for this, neither Eliza nor her parents or relatives seemed to care much, taking the view that "these things happen." However, other nobles—particularly those of the Reformist Faction—would sometimes whisper behind her back that "Eliza was a child born of her mother's infidelity."
Incidentally, furious about this, the Sylphild family and their allied nobles investigated the rumor-mongering nobles and discovered that those very same people had been mass-producing illegitimate children of their own. Even now, this remains a joke known only to those in the know,
with taverns
being the main venue where it's told. By the way,
according to me and Grandpa,
thunder magic is considered a derivative of wind magic, so while it might be rare, it's nothing strange at all.
Eliza has golden twin drill curls—a hairstyle I'd never seen before in this world (it was apparently trendy about twenty to thirty years ago, but has become rare recently due to how difficult it is to maintain). She stands about one hundred and seventy centimeters tall with a well-proportioned figure. People who don't know her sometimes say she "looks down on others" or "acts high and mighty," but she's not like that at all in truth. She does have clear likes and dislikes, but is fundamentally a good person. Her unusual hairstyle makes her popular with children, and since she loves kids herself, she apparently visits the orphanage run by her family as well as orphanages in the Royal Capital quite often. Incidentally, her nicknames are "Drill Big Sis" and "Swirly Big Sis."
"Seriously, if you push so hard and end up making Amy hate you, what's the point? There's a much more promising method to make her your sister without any issues."
"What did you say?!"
Cain's words—specifically the part about the method to make her his sister—drew a huge reaction from Eliza. As for that method, I already knew about it since I'd heard it before when Eliza wasn't around, but it would lead to all sorts of trouble, so I quickly evacuated from the dining hall.
"So, Lion, do you have some business with me? Or have you officially become a male stalker?"
Lion had been sneaking along behind me after I slipped out of the dining hall, so I teased him by bringing up old times. He hurried over to me in a panic. Whenever Lion acted this suspiciously, it usually meant he had something to feel guilty about, making him incredibly easy to read compared to the other two.
"No, it's just... please take this!"
What Lion produced from inside his coat were two letters...
"Huh!? You two are into that kind of..."
And of all moments for Chris to appear... She was probably
Aina
and
Eliza
who she'd been running from, but to show up at this exact instant... the timing was way too perfect, honestly making me suspect she'd been secretly watching from the shadows all along.
"I understand that people have those kinds of tastes and preferences, and I have no intention of judging anyone as long as I'm not forcibly dragged into it... Lion, I'm sorry, but please try someone else."
"No, I can't do that! I was specifically told to make sure these get to Tenma, so I'm holding onto them for that purpose!"
"Told by whom? Don't tell me you're... using Tenma as some kind of cover to make a little extra cash on the side?"
At my joke, Lion grew visibly panicked and tried to force the letters into my hands. Chris, watching this, seemed to suspect that Lion was acting as some kind of deliveryman bringing me letters. Normally, no one would jump to that conclusion, but Chris was currently so worn out from dealing with Aina and Eliza that she was more on edge than usual.
"I'll take them for now... but these aren't anything weird, right? Love letters or something?"
As I accepted the letters with one final caution, opened the envelope, and read the letter inside, I finally understood why Lion had been so reluctant to hand them over.
"Lion, does Maria or the King know about the contents of these letters? If they don't, this could get really messy."
"It's fine. I obtained His Majesty's approval in advance, and he told me it all comes down to Tenma's decision."
Lion suddenly put on a serious face and told me everything had been thoroughly taken care of.
"So, what's written in the letters?"
Chris seemed curious about the contents of the letters, but he didn't stoop to peeking from the side. This was probably because not only had Lady Maria and the King come up in conversation, but he had also noticed the family crest stamped on the envelope's seal.
The family crest on this envelope depicted a "howling wolf" — the symbol of the "Haust Margrave Family," Lion's real family. The fact that Lion, who bore this crest, had "brought it over" meant that someone other than Lion from the Haust Margrave Family was the sender, and among them, someone who had secured the King's cooperation and could furthermore use Lion — the "next head of the Haust Margrave Family" — as a messenger. That made it obvious who had written the letter.
"To put it simply, the Margrave of Haust wants me to lend him my strength."
"Hm~... So, are you going to take this... request? His Majesty said it's up to you, which means it's neither a mandatory request nor a designated request, right?"
A mandatory request was essentially one issued for situations involving national defense or crises in the cities or villages where an adventurer was stationed, and adventurers had virtually no right to refuse. Declining could result in penalties as severe as having one's adventurer qualifications revoked. And separately, in a more underhanded sense, the term also referred to when nobles or other people in power used their influence to force adventurers to accept requests against their will.
A designated request was, as the name implied, when the requester designated the adventurer they wanted for the job. On the surface, adventurers had the right to refuse these, so declining was supposedly not a problem. However, requesters who issued designated requests were typically "operators of large trading companies" or "nobles" — people who wielded significant influence over the Adventurer's Guild — meaning there was a real potential for disadvantage down the line.
From what he'd heard, some adventurers were given the cold shoulder by the Guild, sold defective tools and equipment... and in the worst cases, betrayed by party members who suddenly attacked them, forcing them to retire from adventuring altogether.
Those traitorous companions had been hired by "operators of large trading companies" or "nobles," and even if the victim reported the incident to the Guild, strings were being pulled behind the scenes, so no crime was recognized — in fact, the blame was sometimes placed on the one who had been attacked. Granted, with recent improvements in the law, such stories had become rare, but that was only because they weren't reaching the surface; behind closed doors, it was said to still be happening.
In Tenma's case, people around him considered him an adventurer who had caught the royal family's favor, so anyone wishing to issue a designated request was expected to obtain prior permission from the King and the others. Because of this, he had rarely received designated requests from outside the royal family, and when he did, they were only from close acquaintances like the people of Kukuri Village or Duke Sanga.
Being in the royal family's good graces invited jealousy from fellow adventurers, but since the requests came from people he knew well, there were fewer unreasonable demands, which made the work much more manageable.
The request that Lion brought amid all this was one seeking help with territorial defense.
Apparently, some nobles from the neighboring Gilstr Republic had been making movements near the Haust Margrave territory that could be interpreted as military action, and when the Margrave dispatched his knights to stand guard, they unfortunately discovered hordes of monsters elsewhere — two of them, at the same time.
The first was a horde of goblins similar to what they had encountered down south before, estimated at two thousand. For this, they planned to deploy adventurers active in the Haust Margrave territory as the main force, supplemented by squads (around fifty people each) or companies (multiple squads, around two hundred) of knights.
And the second one — this was the reason the Margrave had wanted to call Tenma for help. It was...
"A Wyvern flock..."
A flock of approximately thirty Wyverns, apparently nesting in a mountain within the Margrave territory for breeding purposes.
The Haust Margrave Family's knight order was said to be among the strongest in the kingdom, but even so, the Margrave had concluded that simultaneously dealing with the Gilstr Republic, sending adventurers to handle the goblin horde, providing reinforcements to surrounding towns and villages, and additionally confronting a Wyvern flock was impossible. Well, if the Margrave's military reputation lived up to the rumors, it wasn't absolutely impossible with the Margrave's knights alone. But the cost would undoubtedly be severe, and if things went poorly, the border with the Gilstr Republic might even shift. So at the very least, the Margrave's judgment was not wrong.
That said, what struck Tenma more than the military judgment was that the Margrave had thought to issue a direct request to him personally. This wasn't meant as criticism of the Margrave — but to anyone who didn't know about the history between them, they were rumored to be on extremely bad terms. Of course, they weren't exactly on good terms either, so it wasn't entirely off the mark, but at least the old grudges and ill feelings were gone. That was probably because getting to know Lion had changed his image of the Haust Margrave Family, and enough time had passed for him to recognize that there had been unavoidable aspects to that incident. So...
"I'll accept this request. Since we're dealing with a Wyvern flock, I expect you to make the compensation worthwhile. Also, I'll be taking the request through Orasion, and depending on the situation, I may evacuate Aura and Jeanne to a safe location mid-mission. Is that acceptable?"
"No problem at all, that's a relief. I'll let my father know the two of them are on the team as general support staff, and as long as the compensation is paid on a party basis, there shouldn't be any issues. I'll also negotiate to make sure individual bonuses can be paid out based on contributions."
For the time being, they decided to settle the broad terms right there on the spot, with the exact compensation amount to be negotiated directly with the Margrave. Normally, you would decide whether to accept a request based on the price offered, but in this case, there was no risk of being lowballed or having payment withheld. After all, the head —
— acting as deputy —
— Lion had already agreed to the terms, and more importantly, the royal family had been consulted in advance. If they were to renege on payment now, it would be tantamount to dragging the royal family's name through the mud. No decent lord would do such a thing, let alone a prominent figure in the Royalist Faction.
"I'm planning to start preparations right away and head out as soon as possible, but what about you, Lion? Are you coming with us?"
"I'm counting on it. I've sent requests for reinforcements to the Margrave family's own vassals as well as allied nobles like Duke Sanga and Marquis Samons, but I wouldn't get my hopes up for too many. If we amass too large a force, the neighboring country might grow overly cautious."
That was a fair point. If they openly gathered large numbers of other lords' knights near the border, the other side would use that as justification to deploy their own knights in force. And then, at the slightest provocation, they would come charging across with glee — the provocation itself being irrelevant as to which side caused it. If that happened, the Haust Margrave would be at a serious disadvantage, already dealing with goblin packs and wyvern flocks.
In that scenario, the Gilst Republic could carve out territory and claim rights to the land if they won, or if they lost, they could still withdraw while inflicting as much harassment as possible on the Haust Margrave's domain.
"Well, I'll leave that sort of thing to the Margrave. As for what I'll be doing — I guess it's dealing with the wyvern flock as quickly as possible, then standing by near the border knights in case something goes wrong... something like that?"
He could leave the complicated political stuff to the Margrave and the King. In exchange, he had to take full responsibility for handling the wyvern flock. The truth was, this request carried significant risk not only for the Margrave but for him as well.
The Margrave's risk was reputational — that people would say, "Did they forget what they did to Tenma and only come crawling back when it was convenient?" No matter how much Tenma and the Margrave's side publicly advertised their friendly relationship, there would inevitably be those who failed to understand, or simply ignored, the situation and made a fuss about it.
As for his own risk — if this request failed, or if serious damage occurred, there was a real possibility that people would say, "He used the wyvern flock to get revenge on the Margrave over what happened in the past." Even if damage did occur and the Margrave declared it "within expected parameters," that might keep the problem in check, but there would certainly be no shortage of people stirring up trouble regardless.
"But in exchange, the rewards will be just as big, eh?"
After Tenma reported to everyone that he had accepted the Margrave's request and explained the contents and the risks, his grandfather quickly grasped the significance of what was to be gained.
"That's right. First, the reputation — people will say I forgot about the past and stood up against the wyvern flock to help the Margrave's territory. And the fact that the Margrave cleared it with the King before sending the request to me matters a lot too. Thanks to that, I should see a sharp drop in weird parties sending me direct commission requests from now on. Honestly, I'm not short on money, so adventuring is more of a hobby for me at this point — I could take only the jobs I want and it wouldn't be a problem. Well, I suppose I still need to take some jobs I'm not thrilled about, just to keep my license from being revoked..."
"And then there's the compensation from the Margrave, but more than that, the materials from the slain wyverns are what really count."
He would probably have to hand over some portion to the Margrave, but he could still claim the majority of the materials for himself... Well, it was counting chickens before they hatched at this point, but with Slarin and the others at his side, there was no chance they wouldn't be able to bring down at least a few wyverns.
"I'm here too, so it'll be fine!"
Amour seemed eager as well. There had been talk of Amour returning to the south at some point, so Tenma had been considering excluding her from this request, but she clearly had no intention of being left behind.
"But Tenma, with an entire flock of wyverns as the target, aren't we a bit short on manpower?"
At Chris's question, Tenma counted the members off on his fingers, and sure enough, when facing a wyvern flock, they were severely lacking in numbers. So far, the participants were...
"Eight from Orasion (excluding Jill and Gor from Raiden's group), and of those, Jeanne and Aura are non-combat. Plus the three idiots — Albert, Cain, and Lion —
Chris —
that makes twelve... Well, normally that wouldn't even come close to being enough, but Gramps and I are here too, and if we're just talking numbers, we can deploy over a thousand Golems, so we're good!"
With over a thousand Golems, that should be plenty. As I was telling everyone that, Chris, who had been mulling over my words, suddenly shouted, "Wait just a minute!!!"
"Why am I being counted in this? There's no way I'd get enough time off to accompany you on that request. Besides, the Captain would never allow it."
"Um, well... in the letter we got from the Captain together, it says, 'As for someone from the Royal Guard,
someone who's free,
you can take one along and put them to work. Anyone's fine.'"
Chris snatched the letter from my hands and read it over and over, examining the signature from every possible angle.
"Come to think of it, I had a letter from the Captain of the Royal Guard addressed to you, sis."
Lion pulled the letter from his coat as if he'd only just remembered it and tried to hand it to Chris, but the moment he produced it, she snatched it right out of his hands. Chris then read the letter...
"This means they were singling me out from the very beginning!"
My letter had said, "Anyone's fine," but the letter to Chris specifically said, "Go help an adventurer heading to the Haust Margraviate." Well, within the perpetually busy Royal Guard, there was really only one person who fit the criteria of "someone likely to be near me and who is currently free," so when this topic came up, Chris had probably been the chosen one from the start.
"Well, let's just go with this for now. Worst case, I can unleash Tempest and wipe out the wyvern flock... though the surrounding area would probably be devastated too."
Gramps and Chris seemed to understand the implications of that muttered line that Lion hadn't heard, and they both looked at him with sympathy. For the record, neither of them had actually seen Tempest firsthand, but they'd visited the aftermath of where it was used and heard stories from the people of Kukuri Village, so they had a rough idea of its power.
Apparently, Gramps had seen the site when he came looking for me right after the incident, and Chris had gone there under the King's orders to investigate the Dragon Zombie and search for me. Both of them initially assumed the Dragon Zombie had been responsible, but after hearing witness accounts, they concluded it had been my magic.
"In any case, the sooner we head to the Margraviate, the better, so let's prepare today and tomorrow and depart from the Royal Capital the day after. According to Lion, the trip normally takes about a month, so our goal is to arrive in half that — two weeks. We might have to jump straight into subduing the wyvern flock the moment we arrive, so don't slack on your preparations. Aina, I'll need you to manage the manor while we're away. As for Jubei and the others, I'll talk to Mark and the rest about taking care of them, so you can leave that to them. Alright, dismissed!"
Then again, when it came to Orasion, "preparing for an adventure" basically meant everyone stuffing whatever they thought they'd need into their Magic Bags and Dimension Bags,
which, according to Jin and the others, was something they envied — the luxury of not having to worry about weight. It was a privilege only those who could craft their own Magic Bags and Dimension Bags enjoyed.