Sheryl Tusin Ogatorf
Sheryl Tusin Ogatorf
Just because I wore the grandiose title of personal butler and dressed the part, it didn't mean anything special.
At most, I woke at dawn to be Sheryl's sparring partner, straightened up the room with the maids while she ate, and prepared for the day by gathering necessary items and loading them onto the carriage in advance. Even at its most troublesome, it was just tagging along when she attended banquets, serving as a living notepad that remembered nobles' names and faces in advance for her.
Normally, given the Ogatorf family's prestige, it would have been a considerably busy position, but Sheryl was different.
"We're going to pick up a request today, so get ready."
"Hey. I even went to the trouble of putting on perfume. If that was the plan, you should've told me earlier."
"I deliberately didn't tell you so you'd do that."
I looked at Sheryl, who was getting increasingly skilled at teasing people, and trembled with fury.
Since she spent six days a week at the academy, a place where bringing servants was prohibited, I had virtually no work that could be called work. After finishing a few simple tidying tasks, my daily routine consisted mostly of training with the knights. Even then, Sheryl only went out on days when she had a break from lectures, and she went not to have fun or shop, but to pick up adventurer guild requests. Today must have been exactly that day.
Infuriating.
What annoyed me most of all was that Sheryl—the very incarnation of infuriating—was already a Blue-rank adventurer.
When I first heard, I'd assumed she'd be Green-rank at best, the sixth tier. I never imagined she was one rank higher. It sounded like only a single step, but Green-rank and Blue-rank were viewed completely differently: Blue-rank was where people finally started treating you as a proper adventurer. The three ranks below it were basically a triple filter for weeding out people too hopeless to trust.
It was quite astonishing that no one objected or even assigned a guard to the little girl who was the heir to a noble house, letting her wander out alone to hunt monsters, but after accompanying her a few times, I realized there were knights secretly watching over her without her knowing.
Judging by the fact they offered absolutely no help, it seemed they would only intervene if someone recognized her identity and attempted a kidnapping or assassination.
Of course, this was a good thing for me as well, since she always demanded I accompany her on requests.
Obviously, a brand-new adventurer still carrying a plain, uncolored iron rank tag couldn't tag along on Blue-rank requests. Thanks to the perfectly legitimate excuse that I was Sheryl's aide, I could go to the Adventurers' Guild on any weekday and take whatever requests I wanted.
More than a year of genuinely hard work had earned me the Green-rank tag hanging around my neck. A lot had happened along the way, but overall it had been a pretty satisfying experience.
It was also around then that one of the questions I'd had when I first arrived—'What kind of requests does the capital's adventurer guild have and how does it sustain itself?'—was resolved.
The subjugation requests at the capital's adventurer guild were simple. Extremely easy, or extremely hard. Literally no middle ground.
The difficult requests were so absurd that just reading them, you couldn't tell reality from fiction. 'A manticore has appeared in such-and-such mountain range and is attacking a city.' 'A high-ranking Demon was summoned somewhere and the place was devastated.' Notices like that appeared and vanished almost every day. That was when I first truly felt that this world wasn't just plagued by the Demon King's Army.
By contrast, the easy requests were the kind of classic quests you could find anywhere. From goblins in the nearby villages to exterminating monsters in the underground waterways, to hunting low-risk monster packs that had recently multiplied—anything beyond that level of difficulty was invariably far from the capital. It was maintained in a way that perfectly justified the name 'low-level hunting ground'.
It was no exaggeration to say it was a free-range theme park for safe, hands-on experience. As a result, those with some means who wanted to build their skills safely ended up starting their careers at the capital's adventurer guild.
With such a clientele, the guild couldn't lose money. Seeing them sell consumable goods right inside the guild, it wasn't hard to guess they were turning a tidy profit.
Lost in these thoughts, I pulled on my leather armor, gathered my cloak and other gear like the sleeping bag I'd brought when I first left Ogwen, and stepped outside. Soon after, Sheryl appeared before me, having changed into attire similar to mine.
She wore lightened leather armor and greaves even lighter than mine, with iron gauntlets and a longsword at her waist—the picture of an adventurer. Perhaps mindful of the gradually chilling weather, she'd even thrown on a short cape she hadn't worn a few months ago.
"We're going a bit farther today."
She said abruptly.
"How far exactly?"
"I heard there are signs of bandits gathering at the ruins near the western wine farm."
Sheryl tied her long hair back for ease of movement and started walking, but I couldn't hide my doubt.
"If the western wine farm you're talking about is the one I'm thinking of, the round trip alone will take a day."
"That's the one."
"Wait, what about the academy?"
"Didn't I tell you? It's vacation."
She absolutely had not. But I clearly remembered that around the same time last year, in early October, she'd had a week off for a so-called fall break. A fall break, for crying out loud! That this infuriating creature got to enjoy a holiday I hadn't even experienced in my modern civilized life was making my stomach churn with jealousy.
"The more I think about it, the academy has it way too easy. A vacation? I say we should file a protest and demand they teach you all 365 days of the year without missing a single one."
"The moment you submit a protest like that, a petition to allow servants to accompany students will go up right alongside it."
"You're good at studying. Doesn't the thought of being able to study 365 days a year give you a thrill?"
As if the question wasn't worth answering, Sheryl drove her fist into my side.
Exchanging the sort of pointless banter we'd grown used to, we exited through the mansion's back door, seen off by the servants and knights. The street we stepped onto was bustling, but as it was the gate normally used by non-noble visitors, no one paid any attention to the pair of us emerging in adventurer's garb.
"Going by what you said, isn't it either a subjugation or reconnaissance request?"
"Subjugation."
"That'll be a decent experience."
"How infuriating."
The fact that the word 'infuriating' about me came out of her mouth meant she was thinking the exact same thing as me. What an utterly infuriating brat.
No matter how you looked at it, it was seriously infuriating that a mere 15-year-old's thought process ran so similarly to mine, especially considering my age including my past life.
◈
After a long walk, we arrived at the adventurer guild, which was already crowded with quite a few people from early morning. Since coming to the guild at this hour on a weekday was an unfamiliar experience for me, the crowd felt awkward.
"I didn't realize there were this many adventurers in the capital."
Interestingly, even Sheryl seemed to be thinking the same thing. No matter what, she had seniority, so if she was saying this, it could only mean something else was going on.
"If even you think so, doesn't that mean something's blown up?"
"Who knows. Judging by the atmosphere alone, it doesn't seem like anything serious, so maybe it's nothing."
True, it was more just noisy bustle than a heavy atmosphere hovering around. Since that meant there was probably no big problem, we decided not to mind it and approached the huge bulletin board plastered with requests.
As always, a mess of requests were plastered all over the board today. From neatly posted request forms put up by the guild receptionists, to ones that had been taken down and put back crookedly, leaving a mountain of messy, skewed papers. It was chaotic enough already, and with the crowd, the area in front of the bulletin board was pure chaos.
"....Ngh!"
Behind the crowd, Sheryl—just over 165 centimeters tall—was straining onto her tiptoes with everything she had, trying to see the notice board.
It was a truly delightful sight!
Behold that hopping platinum-blonde rabbit! She could've just asked me, a guy fifteen centimeters taller and much bigger than her, but her towering pride and initiative sent her diving into hell voluntarily! Too dignified to snap at the people jostling her, she couldn't even complain—she could only twitch those blocky eyebrows! And then a furry hand crept toward her bouncing backside... Huh? What?
In an instant, my previously delightful mood went ice cold. I strode right over, pulled Sheryl toward me with my left hand, and with my right, seized the wrist of the pervert who'd been about to grope her, flinging him backward.
-Crash! Clatter!
I couldn't even guess his age. Mid-twenties? Thirty? Between the beard and weathered skin, adventurers were damn hard to age. But judging by his filthy boots, poorly maintained gear, and worn leather breastplate that showed years of use without any serious damage, he was clearly nobody important. The crash as he hit a chair was loud enough to draw the attention of the people around us.
"What the fuck...! Who the hell are you?!"
"'What the fuck'? 'Who the hell are you'? Why are those words coming out of your mouth?"
I'd expected him to run or at least hesitate after I slammed him to the floor, but instead he got angry and glared at me. My brow furrowed on its own.