I Want to Be an Adventurer Again
I paid a visit to the Koubel Refinery late that night. Fortunately, the door was still open.
Philstone was organizing crates packed with medicinal ingredients and filling the refiner with water to bring it to a boil.
Even now, I could hardly believe that this man was the Guild Master. Knowing he was the original culprit behind every tedious, nitpicky rule that had reduced the entire guild's operations to paperwork only made him more insufferable. I still couldn't wrap my head around it — a system that placed more trust in documents than in people. What was he planning to do if the guild ever caught fire?
I understood that he'd documented the entire guild operation and washed his hands of it so he could focus on running the refinery. But if a fire burned through every stored document, wouldn't that mean the Adventurer Guild was out of business? Adventurers like me, whose records had been wiped from existence, would start popping up in droves.
Not that I could just go and set the place on fire, so I supposed there was nothing to be done about it. No matter how you looked at it, he was treating the potion refinery as his real job and playing Guild Master as a hobby. Armchair bureaucracy in the truest sense of the word...
I felt a fresh wave of sympathy for the receptionists working themselves to the bone back at the guild.
The moment I set foot inside the refinery, Philstone looked at me with an expression that all but said, Why are you here again?
"Why have you come again?"
I knew he'd say that. But I needed this man if I was going to recover my adventurer rank.
I'd thought it over on the way here. How could I satisfy the conditions to receive Silver Rank all at once? The answer was to include this man in those conditions as much as possible.
Philstone had no intention of backing down from the principles he'd set regarding guild affairs. Put another way, that meant we might be able to talk as long as it didn't violate the guild's principles.
So I planned to ask him outright. I wanted to register as a new adventurer, and I needed his help to recover my rank in one go. If there was a monster he wanted dealt with, or some task that needed handling, I wanted him to tell me. In short, I was going to take a subjugation request directly from Philstone, the Guild Master — and if possible, make him one of the three required witnesses.
Well, if he shut me down on the spot, I'd be right back at square one with no answers. But right now I had to try everything.
"Ah — this time I didn't come to beg you to restore my erased records."
"Then what is it? Have you come to sell medicinal ingredients?"
"I'm going to register as an adventurer again. But according to the guild's principles, they say I have to start over from Novice rank."
"Then that is what you should do."
Philstone answered without so much as glancing at me, wiping empty potion bottles as if he had not a shred of interest.
Hmm. How should I bring this up? In a situation like this, I needed to let him know I respected his methods — just enough to lower his guard a little.
"Honestly, I still have a hard time accepting it. But I fully understand that you don't want anyone touching the rules you established. I have no intention of arguing about that any further."
"How fortunate."
"That said, I'm in a difficult position myself. My Silver Rank as an adventurer was wiped out overnight, after all. So I'd like to make a proposal — one that doesn't break the guild's principles, while still allowing me to recover my original rank."
I spoke calmly, undeterred by Philstone's indifference. Then the hand wiping the empty potion bottle stopped. He looked at me and asked,
"Please explain in detail."
I felt the atmosphere had softened considerably compared to the start. Had my statement about recovering my adventurer rank without breaking his principles piqued his curiosity? The what a nuisance, just leave already vibe from a moment ago had vanished. Looks like saying I respected the guild's principles had landed properly.
This... we might actually be able to talk.
"When registering a new adventurer, the guild sometimes differentiates starting ranks based on that person's background and experience, doesn't it? I intend to use that to recover my original rank. That should be acceptable, yes? It's not breaking guild rules — it's receiving a rank through legitimate means."
"That system was not created to be exploited as a loophole."
I immediately countered him.
"I already have a track record of operating as a Silver Rank adventurer. Plenty of people know that. So using it as a means to recover my original rank can hardly be called a loophole, can it?"
Philstone was quietly staring at me. I pressed on.
"Every law and rule is made by people, so they're bound to have gaps. As you yourself said, a missing person the guild declared dead coming back alive might be a special case. And the current guild rules have no way of addressing that special case at all. And yet you don't want to change the guild's rules, do you? So I'm going to respect those rules while obtaining what I rightfully deserve."
"Hmm..."
Philstone seemed to ponder for a moment. And in that interval, Narration flowed through my mind.
Every rule and document Philstone had created for the guild meshed together like the cogs of an intricate machine.
His goal had been to make the guild run itself with minimal oversight — even without Philstone's involvement at all.
But he had become so obsessed with that goal that, at some point, he had grown compulsively incapable of changing any guild rule once it had been set.
So that was it. Not far off from what I'd already figured about him. A kind of paranoia or fastidiousness that had calcified in the worst possible direction. Well, people like that existed from time to time — the type who would rather die than change something once they'd decided it. Those microscopic, unreadable terms packed into every document the guild produced were probably his handiwork too.
Not the sort of person I'd want anything to do with on a personal level — far too exhausting — but right now I needed this man.
"What I want is simple. I am an adventurer who has already operated at Silver Rank. But I have no means of proving it, so I can't receive my original rank anew. All I need is for you, as Guild Master, to give me an unofficial monster subjugation request directly — and then vouch for it. That way the guild's rules remain unbroken, and I can re-register as an adventurer at my original rank after proper verification."
"How unexpected. You intend to use the rules, then?"
"You know as well as I do that the guild's rules have gaps, Master. You know, and you still refuse to fix them — because my case is so rare. In that case, I'll work within those rules to recover what's rightfully mine."
I spoke with a harder edge, grounding myself in the facts Narration had just confirmed.
"...That's a reasonable argument."
Philstone finally conceded. At last, a way through to recovering my adventurer rank was coming into view.
Honestly, I still thought the fastest and easiest path would be for him to simply revive my erased records. I couldn't help resenting that pigheaded operating style — rather than changing the guild's rules, just make the adventurer conform to them. But trying to force that ironclad stubbornness to break was still worse than going around it. Recovering my rank by a roundabout route beat not recovering it at all. If both sides dug in their heels, a negotiation went nowhere. Yielding a step to find an opening was a negotiation technique in its own right.
"As it happens, there is one matter that's been occupying my attention. It hasn't even been filed as a guild request yet — I had intended to handle it personally. I'll leave it to you. And I shall provide my guarantee as Guild Master."
Once I'd gotten him to accept the premise, the conversation moved refreshingly fast.
"All right. What do I need to deal with?"
"A mandragora."
A mandragora? I was pretty sure I'd heard that somewhere. Wasn't that the name of a medicinal ingredient, not a monster? I didn't know if it was the same in this world, but the mandragora I knew was something like a ginseng that screamed when you pulled it out of the ground.
"Isn't that the name of a medicinal ingredient?"
"It is. But this is no ordinary mandragora."
Philstone said it with a smile in his eyes.
"It's a Variant Mandragora I was cultivating. It's gone berserk, so I've got it contained for now."
Wait. I didn't know anything about that. That's terrifying.
The next day, I set out along the forest path behind Kubel with the three people who would serve as witnesses to the monster subjugation. Silphy, Meruru, and — as promised yesterday — Guild Master Philstone himself.
Silphy, as expected, had immediately and enthusiastically offered to help the moment I explained my situation. Meruru, for a receptionist, wasn't particularly good at paperwork and mostly handled demi-human clients, so she had relatively more free time and was able to come along. And Philstone was taking the lead himself, both to guide me to this so-called Variant Mandragora and to serve as a subjugation witness.
"I can't believe sunbae has to register for a new adventurer rank... It just doesn't make any sense."
As we followed Philstone, Silphy spoke in a small voice beside me. I thoroughly agreed with her — but at this point, I considered myself lucky just to have found a way through at all.
"The Guild Master's not your ordinary pigheaded type. I barely managed to get this chance as it is."
"Ugh... I'd better be careful not to get on his bad side myself."
"Well, it seems the guild was convinced I was dead. The moment they processed it as a death instead of a disappearance, it was already over."
"Sunbae, once you get your rank back, would you like to take requests together again?"
"I'd like that."
We were making our way deeper into the forest, trading idle chatter, when Philstone, who had been leading the way, came to an abrupt halt and turned to me.
"Here. This is where I've contained the Variant Mandragora."
I looked where he pointed. Something was wrapped so tightly in an enormous barrier that you couldn't see inside at all — a barrier so powerful you could feel its mana even standing at a distance. Just what kind of Variant Mandragora needed to be sealed this thoroughly?
"I had planned to undo the barrier and deal with it myself before long... but I thought this was a timely opportunity."
"I... I have to ask again. Mandragora is a medicinal ingredient, right?"
"That's correct."
Philstone answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Then why seal it up this thoroughly?"
"Mandragora is an ingredient in potions capable of instantly reviving even patients hovering between life and death. For someone who runs a refinery, it's the finest medicinal ingredient there is. Wouldn't anyone want to cultivate it?"
"I don't understand how cultivating a medicinal ingredient ends up looking like that."
"Whether it's because the Demon King's power has grown stronger, or because I applied too much mana as fertilizer... the mandragora I've contained here is far stronger than most monsters. I locked it up because dealing with it was proving a bit troublesome, but its medicinal efficacy should be exceptional."
I stared at the barrier sealing the mandragora with an expression of pure disbelief. What the hell was this man even doing?
"There's a strange smell coming from inside the barrier, so it is. Meruru feels dizzy, so it is!"
Meruru scrunched up her face beside me. Come to think of it, she had the ability to sense plants underground. I was getting more uneasy by the second.
"Well then. I shall release the barrier."
Philstone raised his hand toward the seal. The barrier encircling the Variant Mandragora began to shine with a dazzling light.