Five Stars 4
Where there is a cause, there is an effect — and when an incident breaks out, there are procedures for resolving and cleaning it up.
"Wow, you wrapped the whole thing up in a single day. Getting a little too diligent, aren't you?"
"It was so loud even without a scout I could tell something was going on."
"I heard the adventurers talking — hundreds of orcs pouring out, a high-ranking mage sweeping them with lightning? At that scale, it'd be harder not to notice."
And this involved the kingdom's knight order. There was no way the aftermath would be simple. Elise dumped a dizzying stack of paperwork on her junior and dropped into a seat at the table.
Even if the victim had only been a low-ranking knight, a female knight had still been ambushed while on reconnaissance. In a fantasy kingdom with a rigid class system, a knight order was a superhuman military force that operated under the nation's name — blowback was inevitable.
Of course, weathering that blowback wasn't my job. It fell to the high-ups at the Adventurer's Guild and the nobles who wanted to keep enjoying the city's freedoms. Hand the byproducts over to Antenor, hand the mana stones over to the guild, and an adventuring party's work was done.
"Because the Royal Knight Order got tangled up in it, the guildmaster looked like he was about to cry. He said it was a good thing we handled it fast — if the guild had gotten involved, his head would have been spinning. He told me to make sure I thanked you."
"Just in words?"
"He also said that as long as you and I keep our paperwork games within bounds, he'll cover for us."
"That works for me."
The Adventurer's Guild's guildmaster — Graham, a retired top-tier adventurer and the 5★ Seasoned Old Veteran. He was the kind of man who'd become guildmaster purely on skill that hadn't dulled with age, and he hated getting mixed up in politics with a passion.
At a glance he looked sharp and intellectual, like a company executive, but deep down he preferred using his body over his head — basically the same personality as me. Maybe that was why, now that he no longer had to spar with nobles, he was being surprisingly generous.
"Let's talk proper rewards once the whole party is here."
"Looks like you're treating the leader right."
"I'm just playing the helpful senior adventurer. Unless she makes some catastrophic mistake, I go along with what she wants."
"What kind of wind blew through to change a man this much…?"
Before I met Han Se-ah, my life had been taking the occasional networking request, buying magic tools, and pouring the leftover coin into booze. With a body that sturdy, I'd spent half my life drinking — no wonder Elise was looking at me like I was some kind of curiosity.
Like Grace, Elise was currently viewing Han Se-ah through rose-tinted glasses. Thanks to that, the rumor mill had settled on something like: a genius mage's talent rekindled a lazy upper-grade adventurer's dying passion.
Naturally, the source of those rumors was Elise. More precisely, Elise and my drinking buddies. A guy who used to show up at the tavern every single day had quit drinking, teamed up with a novice adventurer, and started clearing the Tower's lower floors — of course people talked.
"What are you two talking about?"
"The rewards we're getting."
While I sat in our usual tavern listening to nonsense — people who'd bet I'd be back within a month getting into fights, wild rumors that Roland was actually dead because he still hadn't shown his face — the party members filtered in one by one.
Grace and Han Se-ah arrived first, then Irene and Kayden, taking their seats around the table in order. Han Se-ah was clearly looking forward to the boss rewards too; her stream title already had "reward farming" in it.
Help streamer 'Han Se-ah' clear the main quest
0 / 1
She must have been planning to turn on the stream and announce the quest clear, because my quest still hadn't completed. Apparently the structure required Han Se-ah to claim the rewards and finish Floor 20's story before my quest would clear.
Once everyone had gathered, Elise launched into her explanation as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Sitting at the same table, she almost felt like a party member herself.
"So, the guild had several ideas lined up for compensating you based on the mana stones the orc boss left behind when it vanished…. But the situation's gotten a little strange."
"Strange how?"
"The knight order and the Magic Tower have started competing over the mana stones."
At Elise's explanation, the party turned curious eyes on me, as if to ask what the problem was. They seemed to think that competition between buyers only drove the price up — pure upside.
If it had been mages competing with other mages, that would have been true… but the ones who'd butted in this time were the kingdom's knight order. Slap on enough excuses about "for the nation," "for honor," "for the royal family," and the reward could actually end up lower.
In short: even this medieval fantasy land had patriotic underpayment.
"The Adventurer's Guild sells mana stones on your behalf — it doesn't hand out its own assets to adventurers. The whole point of the organization is to stop adventurers from getting robbed of their hard-earned results at unfair prices."
"Is that so? Then what happens if the knight order buys them?"
"You might get some medal for serving the royal family and nothing else, or they might slash the reward by saying purifying blessed land is simply your duty."
"Huh? What kind of nonsense is that?"
"I said it could happen, Grace — not that it will."
Obviously, the Adventurer's Guild was poor. If you had a talent for making money with money, you'd be a merchant, not stuck in an adventurer's guild. They brokered requests and sold mana stones for a cut — they didn't have vaults stuffed with gold coins.
Besides, it would be ridiculous for the guild to pay out rewards before a buyer was even locked in. They were supposed to take a commission after handling the sale — buying the mana stones themselves without selling them first would just be absurd.
If the knight order and the Magic Tower started a pride contest over purchasing the stones, the sale would get delayed, and if the sale got delayed, the rewards the guild could pay out got delayed right along with it. That was why Elise was calling the situation strange.
"I'd love nothing more than to sell them to the Magic Tower and wash my hands of it, but the other party happens to be the Royal Knight Order, so the guild's in a tough spot."
"Those guys are a pain, yeah."
"You've dealt with them plenty on private requests, haven't you, Roland?"
From the guild's perspective, it didn't matter who bought — as long as they paid generously. The more gold that changed hands, the more commission they could skim. A single mana stone wasn't going to make anyone rich, but every adventurer wanted to squeeze out a little more.
If the Magic Tower bought, it would be the usual mix of slightly short gold plus various magic tools, gear, gate passes — things useful to adventurers. The problem was the Royal Knight Order that had suddenly muscled in.
Whether they'd crush the price with gold or paper it over with honor and shut their mouths, nobody knew. The best-case scenario for the guild was walking away with a fat purse of gold. The worst was getting robbed of the mana stones in exchange for some worthless certificate or scrap of a medal — so of course they were agonizing over it.
"It's not just about whether they can skim a commission or not. If the Adventurer's Guild starts handing Tower loot over to the kingdom as tribute, it sets a political precedent. It'll get complicated. Not that it's any of our business."
"On one side, the Magic Tower — reliable rewards, but less commission to skim. On the other, the knight order — rewards that could be huge or tiny, pure instability. And stuck in the middle with no real decision-making power, the guild just reading the room. That's the situation."
"Are you allowed to trash them that bluntly right in front of a guild receptionist?"
"I'm not saying anything that isn't true."
Elise giggled and agreed that was fair enough, and the party's grim mood lightened. At first they'd looked worried that all their hard work would get swallowed up for nothing — but now they understood the Adventurer's Guild was also fighting barefoot for its own interests.
Us fretting here wouldn't change the outcome. Whether the Magic Tower won or the knight order won, they'd thrash it out politically among themselves until someone claimed the mana stones.
"So we have to wait on the rewards for a bit? What should we do in the meantime, Roland?"
"Hmm… we could pick up the remaining Floor 20 requests and clear them, or head up to Floor 21 and train until we're used to cave terrain. Either works."
Clearing the leftover Floor 20 requests was basically grinding. Just because we'd killed the Full Moon Wolf didn't mean the Horned Wolves had vanished, and just because the orc chieftain was dead didn't mean every orc settlement had disappeared — the requests were still there.
Moving to Floor 21, on the other hand, was pushing progress. Completely different from the forest: caves full of giant spiders and bats. Flying enemies, wall-crawlers, narrow tunnels choked with webs — combat there had nothing in common with fighting in the woods.
"Actually, there's a proposal that came in for your party…. It's a request from the knight order."
"A request, unnie? For our party, not Roland?"
"That's right. A request specifically naming Mage Hanna's party."
Stay on Floor 20 to power up while waiting for rewards, or charge straight to Floor 21 like the number-one streamer she was. While Han Se-ah was briefly torn between the two, Elise started explaining again.
"The orcs set up shop in the blessed Avergne Forest this time, right? And even after the boss monster was dealt with, orc settlements are still left on Floor 20. So it seems they want to commission the adventurers who resolved this incident to scout the forest."
From the rough outline, it felt like a side quest. Main scenario, then character quests, then side quests opening up — that kind of structure. Whether it was an actual quest or not, Han Se-ah would know.
I shot her a look that said the decision was hers as the leader, then casually glanced at her stream window as if I were just thinking. She hurriedly opened her quest window too — same thought as me, apparently.
"Oh, a sub-quest just opened. Quests are meant to be cleared, right? As an RPG player, walking past a quest without doing it feels wrong."
A third option had suddenly been added. Stay on Floor 20, push toward Floor 21, or take on the newly opened sub-quest — three paths laid out at once. Chat exploded into noise like China after the realm had been split three ways.
This time she couldn't decide immediately. Han Se-ah sank into deep thought and started reading the chat one message at a time. In a normal RPG, if she'd been casually introducing the game as she played, she would have gone straight for the sub-quest.
But Han Se-ah was the world's number-one progress ranker. She was racing for first-clear prestige and rewards. It was like doing a speedrun and still reading every event scene and story cutscene without skipping — the kind of thing that got you roasted by viewers.
Stay on Floor 20, build strength while waiting for the main scenario rewards.
Push forward fast to protect her pride as number one — the rewards would come on their own.
As a gamer, walking past a sub-quest without even looking was unthinkable.
Standing at the fork of three roads, Han Se-ah wrestled with it for a long time before she finally opened her mouth.