A Troublesome Party
“Why?”
“Well, two women alone would be a stretch. We’ll take it instead.”
A party of two women and one man saying that right now? Looking into their eyes, I could even see a desperate plea for us to just hand the job over.
It was pitiful and rather sad, but watching them made me laugh on its own. I felt a little urge to mess with them, too.
“We’re going after getting our skills verified as well. Appreciate the thought, but I’ll pass.”
“Just hand it over nicely while we’re still asking nicely!”
Oh-ho. One of the women even drew her sword. That spirit of hers was something, at least.
“Aigoo, how scary. You’ve gone and pulled a weapon?”
“So hand it over while we’re still being nice.”
“Nice, my ass.”
Just a little tweak to their mana…
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Guhhhhh.”
“Haahk. Hnngh. Hnngh.”
They collapsed to the ground, screaming their heads off like maniacs.
Watching them crawl around on all fours was a pretty sight.
The two girls had even wet themselves. Ugh. And this was me going easy on them.
But did I really need to go catch the gargoyle myself?
I’d come for old times’ sake, but this was just flexing on kids. There might be clues about the Four Heavenly Kings at the temple. Just hand it over to them?
No need to care whether they lived or died.
“You can’t even take this much, and you want to hunt a gargoyle from the Demon Realm? Are you out of your minds?”
“G-gargoyles—we can catch them too.”
Aigoo. Talk is cheap.
“Are you brainless? You think gargoyles are easy so you want to hunt them. Hey, with that attitude you’ll get wrecked by one instead.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Asking what I meant. The fact that they didn’t know was what I found more absurd. They’d come all this way without ever facing a gargoyle?
Or what—had they just come for the fun of it?
“Exactly what I said. You people treat gargoyles like rocks until they wake up. They’re not.”
“Then…”
I looked over this little adventurer party. One bow, one sword, one spear. Quite the variety of weapons, but…
Whoa, no mage? Are they serious?
“It’s a magical beast with magic attributes. So if you want to beat it down with physical attacks, small fry like you won’t cut it. Better to bring a mage or a priest. Look at yourselves. One archer, one swordsman, one spearman.”
Look at that party composition. Ugh. Hopeless.
I sighed deeply, completely dumbfounded.
“What, so we came all this way just to turn back?”
Our little friends seemed pretty dissatisfied. But no means no, no matter what.
“Why are you so obsessed with this? You got a thing going with the gargoyle or something?”
At this rate I had to have an honest talk about whether they were gargoyle fetishists.
“That’s going too far! Our Hans is a noble’s son, you know!”
A noble’s son? Hans? Not my problem.
No matter how high-ranking the house, unless it was the Armeria Imperial family, no noble stood above the authority of the Ashtar family.
I had no intention of flaunting that bloodline, but…
Huh, have I gotten a bit childish somehow?
I squatted down in front of the three sprawled on the ground and asked.
“A noble’s son, huh. Seeing how hard you’re defending this Hans kid, you two must be commoners. And if a noble’s son is hanging out as an adventurer with commoners, he’s a low-ranking noble with a family in bad shape.”
“We’re friends.”
They were starting to show a little more manners now. Kids like these needed a beating first to learn their place. That way they might keep themselves alive a little longer as adventurers.
“Friends or not, your family’s situation is still bad. Thinking about it, this all comes down to money. Most Demon Realm subjugation quests pay enough for a commoner family to live on for a month or two.”
It was obvious. Not about the adventurer rank—it was about the money. At this point, it was fair to say they were after the cash.
“That’s… not wrong, but…”
“So is there some other reason?”
Why were they so hung up on the gargoyle.
“Actually, this time my family said if I insisted on being an adventurer that badly… I should at least bring back a gargoyle.”
So the girls earlier had gotten angry for this Hans boy’s sake, not their own.
The composition was the worst, but the teamwork looked decent.
If it was a harem I’d worry about catfights, but maybe it didn’t matter.
“I’ll be honest. With your level, you couldn’t catch a gargoyle even if you died and came back. Charging in fearlessly is reckless too.”
“What did you say?”
Ugh. That set them off again.
But look. This world ultimately ran on the logic of power.
The Empire was a great power so the surroundings didn’t dare look down on it. Ashtar was the Empire’s foremost prestigious house so it held the nobles in a tight grip.
What about adventurers?
In the end they divided status by the ranking system. These ones were way down at the bottom.
Pitiful, but that was all they were.
Nothing more, nothing less.
“You can’t even pin it down with damage, and you don’t have a mage combo. The only way you can take a gargoyle right now is to bring a mage, open with status ailments, then beat it up. But you’re all physical. So let’s hear it. Got money to hire a mage? A priest? If you can’t, better give up.”
Now, had they really taken on this stupid challenge without even looking that far ahead? I decided to watch their reaction.
“That’s…”
In the end they couldn’t say a word.
That was how it was. Even with family circumstances tangled in, there were other paths. Why insist on being adventurers? They’d just thrown themselves into the adventurer’s path on youthful hot blood.
From where I stood, these kids were still way too far. Better to just stay home than come here like this.
“That’s all it is in the end. No matter the family situation, you just wanted to make money fast. That’s the whole story. Beyond immature—it’s reckless. Meaning if you take the easy path, you might end up dead instead. I’ve seen plenty of guys who died acting like you.”
Whether my words set her off, the girl with her lower half thoroughly soaked jumped up in a huff.
“We’ve hunted monsters in our own way!”
“‘In our own way’ is the problem, isn’t it? Not ‘in our own way.’ You need to build proper experience.”
“In our own way” for an adventurer’s life. That was pure nonsense.
I wasn’t an adventurer, but if they’d come from around here they were noble children of the kingdom or empire. Having seen them as the Empire’s Taesa, I couldn’t just let this slide.
“Krrrrgh.”
“No matter what face you make, that fact doesn’t change.”
Just throwing a tantrum wouldn’t make it happen. The gargoyles weren’t going to die for them. And a Demon Realm gargoyle at that. Truly hopeless.
Even so, the light in their eyes was still alive.
They were scared, but they wanted to do something.
“No, we… we can do it! If you’re that strong, just hand it over and be done with it!”
“I’m not exactly ordinary myself. If I hand this over to you and you die, that’d be a problem for me.”
“Just who are you supposed to be…”
“For now, I’m a noble too. An Imperial noble. So I can’t send you. And you won’t give up, will you.”
These things you had to experience for yourself. But I couldn’t just leave them to die either, so I’d wrap it up at a reasonable line.
“Right. We can’t give up.”
“Fine. Then I’ll help.”
“Huh?”
If they were going to make a fuss about dying, better to make them face reality. Only after knowing reality would they come to their senses.
“Are you sure?”
“We’ll handle the subjugation ourselves and just let them assist.”
If it were something else I might have handed it over, but if this party claimed to have caught a gargoyle they hadn’t, they’d go after the next one.
I couldn’t allow that.
“R-really?”
“Really, but the condition is this request is ours, so the subjugation is ours too. Depending on how much you contribute to catching the gargoyle, we might not even give you any of the reward.”
“Ugh.”
“You have no choice. Better to be clear. If you force yourselves to follow us or try to snatch the request, we’ll have no choice but to deal with you on the spot.”
I didn’t mean kill. Just knock them out without anyone knowing.
Anyway, it meant they had no choice. Even if they cried and clung, I couldn’t let them die. If I were just some ordinary adventurer maybe, but even back in the hero party days, the hero party title meant I couldn’t leave guys like these to die.
In the end I had no choice but to take these little kids with me to the temple.
I didn’t have a choice either, huh.
If they were going to die anyway, better to drag them along by force like this.
When we arrived near the mountain range I’d seen before, the temple came into view.
“This is the temple with the gargoyles?”
“Any traps?”
“Looks like it was just a temple for its original purpose.”
No matter how I looked, it was nothing more and nothing less than a temple.
“Of course. The demons would never have imagined humans would come to the land they live on.”
Truly surprising. Plenty of people looked at the corrupt Empire and said it was falling, but the Demon Realm had also allowed humanity’s invasion.
This temple, at least if it had been before Eldacrad laid the groundwork for his advance, humans couldn’t even have come here.
Thinking about it, that man was amazing.
And Berna wasn’t just some stupid bitch either. Without her, Eldacrad’s army never would have become strong enough to push deep into the Demon Realm.
Anyway, when we entered the temple entrance, these brats were shocked.
“I can’t believe it. A temple of the Demon Realm is a place like this?”
Demon statues filled every direction.
Getting shocked by one temple like this. At this rate, whatever they did from now on, these kids would only fail.
There were plenty of things scarier than this if you traveled the world. In the end, this was the level of a noble’s kids.
I shook my head, dumbfounded.
Felt childish messing with little kids, but honestly, come on.
Why did I have to bother following them here? That thought even crossed my mind for a moment.
“Seeing you shocked by this, you’ve got a long way to go.”
“No! We can do it!”
Sure. You can do it. You can do the things that scare you.
“Can or can’t, looking at you trembling already says it all. Look.”
Looking at their already quivering forms, the answer was clear.