Multi-Species Alliance 5

In game terms, Rebecca was a straight upgrade over Lily Depp.

Not in the sense of comparing a berserker who swung whatever weapon came to hand against a spear-user who kept a cool head and wielded her weapon with precision — but because the two of them lived remarkably similar lives.

Lily alternated between adventurer commissions and mercenary contracts. Rebecca operated as an adventurer while also commanding a large mercenary company of her own. The reason Rebecca got tangled up in this chain quest yet again was, once more, that mercenary company.

"What, is that you, Roland?"

"Rebecca, what are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing here?"

She was still sulking, the anger not fully burned off yet. Back in her beast days she would have lost her temper completely and gone on a rampage — but at least now she could hold a conversation like a civilized person. Feeling relieved that an ally could actually talk was a little funny, sure, but…

Before the gacha system slapped a star rating on her, Rebecca hadn't been a beast-woman. She'd just been a beast.

Once the party confirmed it was her face, they wordlessly scattered and started freeing the hostages. The bandits who'd thrown in with the orcs seemed to have already been dealt with — corpses were rolling around on the ground alongside mana stones. The party naturally turned their backs on Rebecca and fanned out in every direction.

They all clearly remembered the time her skill had gotten her worked up and she'd dragged me off into the woods right in front of them. Everyone knew she wasn't someone you could reason with. When she got angry she charged; when she got ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠horny she jumped you. That was Rebecca for you — their response was the correct one.

"Ugh, fuck, chasing them down is a pain in the ass. Perfect timing. You handle the cleanup."

"No, what the hell is even going on here?"

"What's going on? Fucking hell. I heard my usual shop got a new shipment of tobacco, so I sent one of my guys, and then I get this bullshit report that he got grabbed by orcs. I hauled ass over here. Fuck, I can't even. Getting kidnapped by orcs? Not even getting eaten by a wild beast — orcs?"

"Uh, hehe… ah, hello there?"

"You little shit, you explain it. Help him with the cleanup."

"M-me?"

"What, you want me to do it? Wiping your ass isn't enough, you want me to cook you dinner too? You wanna get beaten until your face turns into an orc's?"

"No ma'am!"

Instead of answering me herself, Rebecca shoved forward a frail-looking man whose scruff she was gripping like a sack of potatoes, still going hehe. His scrawny frame and the glasses dangling off his face made it clear he was a brain type, not a brawn type. Apparently he handled accounting and supply for Rebecca's mercenary company.

So a non-combat supply officer had been sent to Erteta on one of Rebecca's errands and gotten himself kidnapped by orcs on the spot. Yeah — for Rebecca, that had to be beyond absurd.

In a mercenary company a hundred strong, someone gets nabbed by orcs just running out for tobacco leaves? Rebecca and most of her personal party were Upper-grade adventurers, and the bulk of her mercenaries had reached Intermediate-grade. They were a serious fighting force.

"I came out alone, but I brought a means of contact with me. Hehe. The orcs and the bandits were both too dumb to recognize a magic tool that looks like a badge, so I got a message out right away."

"So then, who are those people?"

"Those adventurers? Well, see, they got kidnapped and dragged here just like me, but right around the time Lady Rebecca showed up they suddenly slipped their ropes and started raising hell. Looks like they broke through to Upper-grade right on cue. Crisis becoming opportunity, I suppose?"

Summarizing the chatterbox mercenary's account, the whole incident had unfolded in a truly ridiculous direction.

An orc chieftain who'd been using the wasteland as a base to "infect" wild orcs. For some purpose of its own, it had started indiscriminately kidnapping civilians from the western outskirts — carefully ignoring large merchant caravans and mercenary companies and other armed groups, obsessively targeting only village residents and small traveling peddlers.

Even after infecting wild orcs into mana-stone orcs, numbers were still short, so it was probably trying to minimize combat losses — or so the mercenary rattled on.

What the thing hadn't accounted for was that this chatty mercenary had been mixed in among those "easy small-fry targets." And that he carried a high-grade magic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tool capable of contacting the Adventurer's City directly from the western wasteland.

Tasked with delivering new tobacco leaves to Rebecca, the mercenary had her direct contact info. He'd reported, "Uh, I've been kidnapped by orcs…," and while he was getting a lifetime's worth of verbal abuse compressed into a single day, Lily's party members had also been kidnapped by the orcs.

"Gerrick? Richard? Wait — I thought you guys headed west to avoid the orcs. You actually got caught?"

"No! We didn't get caught because we lost — we let ourselves get caught for the villagers!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The orc bastards pulled a hostage situation! We were outnumbered so we jumped them, and when things went south they put a knife to a kid's throat and threatened us!"

They were Intermediate-grade adventurers, but the slash-and-burn farming family traveling with them had been taken hostage.

From there, it was the scene we'd walked into. Not even half a year after their liquor supply had been cleaned out by orcs, one of her underlings had gone out for tobacco leaves — her hobby — and gotten kidnapped along with the tobacco, hauled off to the western wasteland.

Patience? Rebecca the berserker didn't even make it through the first stroke of the first character for "endure." She'd been waiting cheerfully for her tobacco resupply before heading into the Tower, and the moment she heard the news her eyes flipped white and she tore off westward.

Orcs kidnapping people, desert bandits being fed food and women in exchange for labor, Tower orcs infecting outside orcs with mana — trivial details like that were never going to register in those flipped-over eyeballs.

Trample. Beat. Smash.

Whether the orc chieftain ran or not, Rebecca poured everything into demolishing the orc settlement that had pissed her off. In the middle of that chaos, Lily Depp's three companions — Gerrick, Richard, and Aileen — slipped their ropes and fought the orcs trying to flee. The result—

At the exact moment you started feeling sorry for the orcs, all three of them leveled up in unison. In other words, they crossed the threshold from the tail end of Intermediate-grade into Upper-grade.

"Aura? You — you've reached Upper-grade!"

"I'm not the only one! We're all Upper-grade adventurers now!"

One Highest-grade adventurer from the 43rd floor entered a skill-induced frenzy and started methodically stomping tents and supplies into pulp, while a party of newly mana-awakened Upper-grade adventurers fell into formation and began hunting orcs.

"Ten-thousand-won donation, thank you. So basically that smart orc kidnapped three adventurers sitting at 99% EXP and got blown up from the inside? Wait — would this whole thing have resolved itself even if I hadn't taken the quest?"

In a mess like that, how smart could an orc really be? All it could do was throw its human underlings out as bait and run.

The abandoned underlings either scattered to save their own skins or took the captives as hostages. Lily's party members couldn't chase the orcs because they were busy rescuing people. And Rebecca had been stress-relieving by demolishing buildings from the start.

"What should we do, Roland? Should we go after that thing too?"

"No, unnie. How about leaving the rest to the knight order? There are a lot of people here — I think we should head back to the city for now."

"The knight order? Hmm, yeah. Maintaining public order was the western nobles' job in the first place."

And just like that, the chain quest came to an absurd end.

Leaving nothing but unresolved plot hooks in its wake.

"Huh, looks like the quest registered as complete. But the text is written like there's going to be a Chain Quest Part 2. Looks exactly like one of those cookie scenes that teases a sequel."

Han Se-ah's quest ended with loose threads left dangling, and Lily departed our party alongside her companions who had just crossed the threshold into Upper-grade adventurers.

"Oh, Roland! What the hell made you spend money on expensive mana communication to contact us first?"

"The orcs from Avergne Forest. We found them."

"…What?"

After talking it over, the party had decided they couldn't just abandon the assaulted women and the captive men, so they'd chosen to help people rather than chase the orcs. But I had no intention of leaving a dangerous spark smoldering.

Even if our party went back to the Tower and started clearing the 31st floor again as the Goddess instructed, that ominous orc still needed to die.

Things had been so chaotic we'd let it slide, but infecting monsters with mana and mutating living creatures into mana-stone-based beings? That was an ability that screamed "major disaster waiting to happen." I couldn't just leave something like that free to flee deep into the northwestern wasteland.

"The orcs that fled from the Tower to Avergne Forest have been kidnapping people out in the northwestern wasteland. And these bastards are special — they know how to use people as hostages."

"…Like the ones who kidnapped our youngest?"

"Exactly. We're heading back because of the people who were being held, but if those orcs pop up again and start kidnapping more people, someone's going to open an investigation into where they came from."

And if the kingdom's mages started a thorough investigation, they'd discover that the orcs turned into mana stones when they died, and that they'd come from Avergne Forest before heading west. So this was a kind of threat.

If you don't clean up after yourselves right now, the ones who get screwed aren't the adventurers — it's the knight order.

"……Thanks for letting us know, Roland. I'll buy you a drink later. Come to the capital."

The day after I briefly split from the party in Erteta to make a mana call to James Sullivan, merchants started whispering that the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Royal Knight Order had suddenly held a departure ceremony for a monster subjugation campaign in the western wasteland.

At this point, whether it was a Demon King's minion or whatever else, they'd handle it themselves.