To the Forest 5
Grace had grown used to her new bow, Irene was content with their gradual climb up the Tower, and Caden still kept her distance—perhaps to better hide the fact that she was cross-dressing. As for me, I'd successfully saddled Han Sea with the title of streamer with a tragic IQ.
"Alice unnie, we took care of the Full Moon Wolf. Does the Guild give us anything for that?"
"Of course they do. Not a direct cash reward, but benefits like discounted potions and reagents at alchemist shops affiliated with the Adventurer's Guild. …Don't tell me nobody informed you?"
Alice stomped off toward the office, ready to wring the necks of whoever had neglected to tell her precious little mage about the Guild's rewards.
I doubted some desk jockey had deliberately withheld the information out of spite toward an Advanced Adventurer party. More likely they'd assumed Alice would handle it since she was close with us, and simply put it off. Alice seemed to share that assessment—her stride looked like a general marching off to war.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing much. The reward we should have received in the first place… Roland, you knew about it, right?"
"Yeah."
Han Sea sat down at the table pretending ignorance and tossed the question my way, only to flip it right back at me. Her eyebrow was cocked—apparently she found it hard to believe a ten-year veteran Advanced Adventurer wouldn't know something like this.
Of course that raised eyebrow was aimed at me, so I answered with a wry smile. No matter how wide she bugged out her eyes, underneath it all she was still a pretty streamer girl.
"Uh… why?"
"I told you. You're the party leader."
The truth was, a potion discount was such a minor reward it wouldn't even show up in Han Sea's quest window, so I'd just left it for her to handle on her own.
My slick answer left Han Sea speechless. As party leader, looking into these things was her job—and realizing she hadn't done it properly, that raised eyebrow slowly came back down. I threw in one more comment for good measure.
"That's why I figured they'd contacted you. Looking at this, Alice is about to tear the place apart."
"Oh—so the contact was supposed to come to me?"
"That's what the Guild is for. It's an organization that exists to protect adventurers' rights. If there's a benefit, of course they should inform you."
At that, she finally relaxed and nodded.
"Hey! See? Even Roland-sensei says it's not my fault. So how about I do a Full Moon Wolf kill-dor once? Maybe restrict chat to people who've verified the tenth-floor gate?"
The viewers must have been giving her a hard time, because she immediately weaponized my words and flipped the threat right back at them. It was pretty cute. As the world's number-one beauty streamer, she was bound to attract the kind of creepy viewers who enjoyed tormenting her—she'd probably been through the wringer.
I kept the now-triumphant Han Sea in the corner of my vision while my mana-enhanced senses picked up Alice's bellowing from inside the office, and one by one the party members arrived.
First came Caden, taciturn but diligent. Next was Grace, who'd left the same lodging as Han Sea but made a quick stop at the market. Last was Irene, who'd let us know in advance she'd be a little late helping out at the Temple that morning.
"Alright, everyone's here. Let's head out."
"Ah, wait a second, Hanna!"
We'd already gathered at the table and accepted gathering commissions for materials we could collect in the forest during our exploration. Just as Han Sea was about to leave with everyone assembled, Alice burst through the door—dragging a shaggy-haired man along with her.
A thoroughly unremarkable man whose only distinguishing feature was the basic cleanliness expected of Guild office staff. Given that neither Han Sea nor her viewers reacted much, he was probably just an ordinary clerk.
"What is it, unnie?"
"If you've bought anything since hunting the Full Moon Wolf, remember this guy's face and write up a list for him, okay?"
"I-I'm sorry…"
"Sure. There wasn't much, but I'll write it down and send it over."
The way he bowed his head made it clear this was the man responsible for the communication failure. Han Sea just nodded casually—as an RPG gamer, the only real loss had been a few potions she carried as standard preparation, so it wasn't a big deal.
Alice, looking thoroughly exasperated with her, shoved the male employee back toward the office and strode over. She casually draped an arm around Han Sea's shoulder and began whispering in her ear. The picture was lovely; the words that leaked out were considerably less so.
"If you bought potions… pad it by about three times. Got it? Unnie's giving you some pocket money."
"…Huh?"
"Oh, come on. This kid's way too innocent for her own good. Roland? Handle it properly."
The one who reacted most strongly to Alice's words was Irene, who sucked in a sharp breath. Completely different from Grace, who'd grown up tough in a slash-and-burn farming village, or Caden, who'd scraped by at the bottom of a mercenary company.
Meanwhile, Han Sea—who still hadn't grasped the meaning in one go—was getting absolutely hammered in the chat window by viewers who'd pounced like hyenas on fresh meat, and she looked completely overwhelmed.
"Um, isn't that… fraud…?"
Irene's voice trembled as if they were committing some major crime, even though padding the potion count would only net a few silver coins and some change at most—not even gold. Her heart really was too pure, befitting a Candidate Saint.
Han Sea was too busy arguing with her viewers to catch Irene's small voice, so I stepped in to soothe her instead.
"It's not fraud. It's a gesture of goodwill from the Guild for failing to deliver information on time, so it's fine."
"…Pardon?"
"She framed it as pocket money so you'd feel comfortable accepting it. But stripped bare, this is a situation where the Guild failed to properly inform an adventurer."
Of course, that was complete nonsense designed to put our Candidate Saint's mind at ease. I'd known Alice for years and been part of the Guild long enough to know better.
This wasn't gold-coin-level embezzlement—a few silver coins were the kind of thing a housewife might swipe from her kid's piggy bank without anyone batting an eye. That was just how medieval guilds worked. A Temple person might not understand, but the world outside the Temple ran like this.
"So it's like compensation, then. Yes—if our adventure wraps up early today, I should buy some skewers the children like."
"You guys are seriously… if I do a chat autopsy later and catch even one thing… Skewers aren't bad, unnie. If you put them in the inventory they won't go cold, so the kids'll love them."
"Miss Hanna's inventory magic is truly remarkable. If the mages in the mercenary companies knew about it, they'd want to learn it even if it meant licking your boots."
"Ah, ahaha—"
Only after Han Sea finally recovered from her viewers' assault could we leave the Guild. The funny part was that Caden also seemed to regard Han Sea as some kind of genius mage. Thanks to that, even when she paused mid-conversation with her viewers, Caden just wrote it off as a mage's eccentricities.
The mage Hanna that Roland—the one Rebecca had introduced—was fond of. A mage who used dimensional inventory magic that even the Magic Tower had never seen. A mage who'd landed effective hits on a Horned Wolf after only a month of adventuring. A mage who'd tracked down the Full Moon Wolf and resolved the city's crisis.
From Caden's perspective, unaware that Han Sea was a gamer, she must have looked like some overpowered magical girl straight out of a power fantasy. Of course, Han Sea couldn't exactly enjoy being praised for her inventory, so she just laughed awkwardly.
"Miss Hanna, confirmed. May your adventure be a safe one."
And so the days passed—adventuring through the Tower via the gate, smoothly clearing the thirteenth and fourteenth floors and reaching the fifteenth. Just when the viewers were starting to feel the monotony of the repetition, Alice came to find us and broke the cycle.
"Hey, Hanna? A named request came in for your party."
"A named request, Alice unnie?"
We were sitting at the table discussing gathering commissions when Alice approached carefully. Her cautious demeanor was so unlike her usual lively self that Han Sea looked at her with confusion.
"It's a request from a small village in Colmar County, on the eastern edge of the kingdom. More precisely… a request that came for the party Grace is in."
"Colmar County… that's my hometown…"
"The request is to eliminate stray orcs that have settled in the nearby mountains. It seems a few villagers have already been killed."
As Alice continued her explanation, Grace's expression darkened. Grace's village was one that slash-and-burn farmers had gathered to build and developed through sheer stubborn grit. There were retired rangers like Grace's father and a few runaway craftsmen, but they weren't at a level that could completely hold off monsters.
The reason I'd met Grace in the first place was because I'd gone to deal with monsters that had settled near the village. The farther you got from the kingdom's capital, the more you suffered from monsters—that was just daily life in this world.
"The reward isn't much. Honestly, the Guild could refuse the request at an institutional level. But I figured you might know Grace, so I'm telling you."
"…Thank you so much, unnie."
Alice liked pretty and handsome people, so she'd probably come by just to double-check after thinking of Grace. I'd known they'd become close enough to call each other unnie and little sister, but I hadn't expected her to remember where Grace's hometown was. As Grace's expression grew complicated, Irene stepped forward and firmly took both of her hands.
"Don't worry, Miss Grace. If they were able to put in a request with the Adventurer's Guild, that means nothing catastrophic has happened to the village yet. We just need to go help them."
"You think so?"
"That's right. From my time as a mercenary—when things are truly dangerous, you can't even call the Adventurer's Guild. The fact that they set even a modest reward and put in a Guild request means this isn't the worst-case scenario."
While Irene patted her comfortingly and Caden, in her blunt way, tried to reassure Grace, Han Sea's gaze was fixed not on Alice or Grace, but somewhere else entirely—pinned to empty air.
Help clear Streamer 'Han Sea''s Character Quest
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I, too, was looking somewhere else.