Tilia (3)
The two who had been standing ahead of me vanished in a hurry, muttering that registration would be too much trouble.
"I-I, um... want to register..."
I peered over the counter with only my face showing. The receptionist's smile carried a clear note of oh, a little kid wandered in — but that was probably just my imagination.
"Why don't we start by having you sit in this chair?"
She produced a chair from somewhere and set it up so I could reach the counter properly.
"Just fill in your information on this form, okay~?"
She beamed as she held out the paper. There were fields for name, race, specialties, and the like.
"H-here!"
The receptionist skimmed the form and gave a little start, as if something had caught her off guard. Probably the race line.
"You're a demon?"
The word must have carried. Adventurers in the line beside me began to murmur.
"That kid's a demon?"
"She doesn't even have horns."
"Not every demon has horns, you idiot."
"And here's another one claiming to be a demon."
"She's kinda cute, though?"
A few of the comments were strange, but most of the reaction boiled down to the same thing — why would a demon come to a place like this, and was this some kind of joke? I should have ignored Lena's advice and just written human...
My face burned.
"We'll measure your mana for your adventurer rank assessment~"
Mana measurement? Was I going to touch that stone again, the same one from Orun?
The receptionist rummaged under the counter and set a black stone — identical to the one I'd seen in Orun — on top of the desk.
"Place your hand on this stone and wait just a moment~"
It's going to glow again, isn't it.
I rested my hand on the stone and waited. It slowly bleached white, then began to shine the way it had in Orun. The bright light spilling from our counter drew every eye in the guild, and the murmuring started all over again.
"If that thing's glowing, how strong is she?"
"I've never seen that stone light up before."
"That kid, back in Hiades Valley—"
"There's a gag order on that. Shut your mouth."
"Mine only ever turns gray..."
"Is she really a demon?"
"Why is a monster like that even in this guild?"
Some people stared in open awe. Others had gone past awe into something closer to fear. I did my best to ignore those ones.
"I-it's glowing? Hang on a second. If it's doing that, then the rank..."
She dug under the counter again and hauled out something that looked like a book, flipping through it with growing urgency. Just how many things did she keep down there? Stuff kept coming out of that counter nonstop.
"When the mana gauge lights up... wait? Th-there's nothing about this in the book?"
"I-I'll register you for now! As for the rank... S-Silver. We'll put you down as Silver!"
She must have settled on Silver after gauging the crowd's reaction. How strong was a Silver rank, exactly?
"Adventurer ranks go Copper, Silver, Gold, then Platinum, and almost everyone starts at C-Copper~"
"Beginning at Silver is extremely unusual~"
Her earlier composure had vanished; she stumbled over her words as she explained. Silver was only the second rank from the bottom. Lower than I'd expected.
"Here you go — your adventurer badge~"
From under the counter she produced a silver necklace, engraved something into it, and handed it over. The guild's emblem — the same design from the doors out front — was stamped into the metal.
"As long as you have your badge, your tolls drop and your identity is easy to verify, so please keep it on you at all times~"
"Ah, yes...!"
Registration seemed to be finished. The receptionist's eyes were already begging me to leave. I hung the necklace around my neck, turned, and walked back toward Lena, doing my best to ignore the dozens of stares boring into me.
"Silver? That's stingier than I expected. Tiable's magic is Gold-rank or higher, you know~?"
"You're stronger than me."
Lena's voice was thick with laughter.
"Who cares about rank~? You're not even planning to work as an adventurer, Tiable."
"Anyway, shall we go post a request?"
"Looks like we're done here~ No more of them coming, are there?"
Tilia said it after she had finished mutating every last soldier drawn in by the noise.
Before her stood the commander of Horn — the man who had fought to the bitter end. The countless wounds he'd earned in battle were gone. His skin was purple, thick veins bulging across its surface, and his empty eyes glowed with a white light that flickered like dying embers. He looked less like a person than a monster wearing a human shape.
"C-com... mand..."
"Hmm, this still feels a little short of what's needed to destroy Sepia..."
"I'll make every surviving soldier mine first, then head for Sepia~"
"Stand by for now~"
"I'll be right back~ Kihhihit."
That night, the screams in Horn never stopped. Not by morning. Not by the next day, either. They would not end anytime soon.
The request went through without any real fuss. Lena had insisted on handling the posting herself — I'm calling dibs, she'd explained. She already looked thrilled at the thought of the payout, even though the job hadn't started yet.
"Lena, why do you keep wearing that hat?"
I asked half-hoping for an answer like because Tiable made it for me.
"Hm? Too much of a pain to buy another one. Costs money, too."
Ah. Right. Very Lena.
"Registration's done, so shall we go do some hunting~?"
"Do you at least know what a Bloody Dragon is?"
"Don't know..."
Bloody Dragon. I'd never heard of the monster in my life. With a name like that, it had to have something to do with blood.
"Bloody Dragons are dragons with entirely red bodies. They show up in packs wherever they catch the smell of blood and devour the corpses — like scavengers."
"They're also pretty vicious, though. Just watching them feed from a distance is enough to make them charge and try to kill you, so if they appear somewhere people travel a lot, we've got to drive them off~"
"As for you, Tiable, you could probably just throw any attack at them and they'd drop dead."
"Got the idea? Then let's go~!"
Wasn't that explanation a little too rough? So they were just dragons that flocked to the smell of blood?
"Y-yeah. Lena... let's go."
I held both hands out toward her, asking her to take them. Lena tilted her head as if the gesture had come out of nowhere, but she took my hands anyway.
"What is it?"
Teleport
"Huh?"
The world around us snapped into mountain terrain. I hadn't realized it in the dark before — the rocks here were this bright a white. White stone under full sunlight nearly blinded me for a second. A foul, rotting stench hung in the air and stabbed at my nose.
I really shouldn't have left the cleanup undone...
"This is... Hiades Valley? In one jump?"
"Lucky for us, no dragons where we landed~"
"Next time, warn me before you teleport. Got it?"
Lena said it while scanning the surroundings with a look of pure disbelief.
Then a cry reached us from somewhere nearby.
"Loud, aren't they. Must be close~"
Probably the Bloody Dragons from the request.
I looked down into the valley. What I saw weren't dragons shining red — they were purple, trampling over the scattered corpses of Horn's soldiers. Countless more had their faces buried in the ground. Feeding, maybe.
But she'd said they were red. Were there purple ones too?
"Purple...?"
Lena looked just as baffled as I felt. Something was definitely wrong.
"They look like Bloody Dragons, but..."
She was clearly rattled. Was a different color really that big a problem?
"Lena, can I attack?"
"Ah, y-yeah. Just leave proof of the kill. Claws or something."
Fire magic was out, then. Wind it is.
Wind Cutter
I stretched out one hand, took aim at the Bloody Dragons, and cast. Wind gathered in my palm with a force so dense the air currents became visible; the crescent of Wind Cutter swelled as it flew, carving through the air with enough power to split the entire valley.
Most of the Bloody Dragons came apart in two clean pieces. Some lost their heads — skulls and torsos separating in a single stroke. Others were sheared clean through the body.
When the Wind Cutter that had divided valley and dragons alike finally struck the ground, a blast of wind roared upward and nearly tore Lena's hat off again.
The Bloody Dragons collapsed without a sound.
"Incredible, as always."
Whether they'd spotted us or not, the surviving Bloody Dragons unfurled wings the size of their own bodies and clawed for the air above the valley. One of them climbed at a startling speed and came into clear view — and up close, something about it looked wrong.
Even for a creature I'd never seen before, those eyes were too empty. Hollow. No monster should have eyes like that.
A small magic circle bloomed above Lena's head, and from it a bolt of lightning the same yellow as her hair lanced straight into the Bloody Dragon. I'd always wanted to study those circles that appeared whenever she cast. A trait of beastman magic, maybe?
The brilliant yellow lightning struck, then leapt from dragon to dragon in a continuous chain. The smell of seared flesh filled the air as Bloody Dragons dropped limp into the valley below.
Lena really was strong.
"What's wrong? Why are you spacing out all of a sudden, Tiable?"
"Are those really Bloody Dragons?"
"The color's a little weird, but the build matches."
"Well, you wiped most of them out in one shot, so I only got a few — but I think we're already done?"
"Let's go grab the proof of kill..."
Lena leaned over the edge to look at the fallen Bloody Dragons — and froze solid. Wondering what was wrong, I looked down into the valley myself.
There, along the clean-cut faces of the dragons I'd cleaved in two, flesh was regenerating. The severed halves were knitting themselves back together into whole bodies.