The Desert's Calamity
Squish.
...Damn it.
If I'd still had my original body, I never would have suffered this kind of humiliation.
"Anyway, a few days ago the survey team Vista put together did head in for exploration, but…"
Pinned against Frederica's chest, feeling the weight of those uselessly oversized breasts pressing down on my head, I swore I would have my revenge.
Crrrk.
"Ren? You're being noisy. Please don't make weird sounds."
"Youuu— gueeek…"
As if to make clear that resistance would not be tolerated, the instant I opened my mouth Frederica tightened the arm wrapped around me. Under a pain that felt like every bone in my body was about to shatter, my mouth was forced shut.
...This damn gorilla, I swear.
"Ahem."
"That's a lump of fat… that's a lump of fat…"
I turned toward the voices. One idiot sat there red-faced, pretending to look away while utterly failing to tear his eyes from Frederica's chest. Beside him, a little kid gripped her teacup hard enough to crack it, eyes squeezed shut as she diligently recited self-hypnosis.
"Fufufu. It's been a while since I've seen such fresh reactions."
Watching them, Frederica murmured that young people really were the best after all, and smiled. I decided to set her straight — that it only looked that way because she was old.
"That's just because you're o— peeeep!?"
The moment I opened my mouth, veins bulged along Frederica's arm.
"Ren. What did you just say?"
"Stop! I won't say anything, so stooop! My guts! My guts are going to come out!"
Yeah. Better drop it after all.
"Anyway, may I continue?"
"Um, about Ren…"
"There's no need to worry about this idiot. Even if you explain it to her, she'll forget the whole thing in three minutes."
"Ah."
"She really… would, wouldn't she."
They weren't wrong, but the way they were treating me felt a little excessive.
"…Just you wait."
I muttered it quietly enough that neither of them would hear, watching Huey and Lucy nod while carefully avoiding my eyes.
"Right, so I'd gotten as far as the survey team from Vista setting out a few days ago?"
"Yes."
Huey nodded at Frederica's question.
"Less than a day after they began the investigation, the advance party's total annihilation was confirmed."
"What?"
"Is that even possible?"
"You'll understand once you hear the rest. At any rate, once the survey captain confirmed the advance party had been wiped out, he decided to investigate the cause of their annihilation first."
Having said that much, Frederica released me from her embrace and spoke with a serious expression.
"The result? Vista decided to abandon the investigation of that region entirely and simply leave it alone."
Ruins that produced otherworldly artifacts were places that guaranteed at least a solid score no matter what. Choosing to leave one of those alone meant…
"So a Disaster-class showed up, huh."
"Yes. And apparently the interior of the canyon has already turned into a Demon Realm."
Tch. Either one alone would have been a headache — and now both had stacked on top of each other.
"Yeah, I can see why they'd give up."
"Right. Still, they didn't like the idea of anyone else benefiting, so they said they'd keep the survey results strictly confidential."
"No talk of hiring us for the job?"
"There was some discussion, but you know how it is, Ren. We don't have the bandwidth right now to deal with something as troublesome as a Disaster-class that crawled out of a Demon Realm."
"…Fair enough. If it appeared inside a Demon Realm, it probably won't leave the area anyway."
It wasn't just a regular Disaster-class — something born in a Demon Realm would require at least two of our people to move on it.
"Anyway, the captain said this."
Frederica looked slowly between me, Huey, and Lucy, her face tinged with concern.
"If the three of you truly insist on investigating, he'll steer the Hero in that direction."
"That's unusual. He's the kind of man who used to break out in hives at the mere thought of getting tangled up with a Hero."
"Apparently he thinks of them as something like industry rivals."
"…Isn't that blasphemy?"
If Arcadia ever found out that a mere mercenary company considered the Hero an industry rival, the Inquisitors would come running with glee.
"Do you realize how bizarre it is hearing the word 'blasphemy' come out of your mouth, Ren?"
"I have that much common sense, you know."
"And the person with that much common sense is the one who smashed the roof of the Great Temple?"
"That was unavoidable. A divine oracle came down and I was forgiven, remember?"
"You're bragging. You really are."
I stuck my tongue out at Frederica — and that was when the other two finally spoke up.
"Um… may I ask just one thing?"
"…What exactly is a Disaster-class?"
Huey and Lucy, who had been fidgeting with curious faces for a while now, opened their mouths at last.
"…You're adventurers, aren't you? You don't know?"
A Gold-rank adventurer who didn't know what a Disaster-class was?
"I've only been an adventurer for a year. How much am I supposed to know?"
"If Master doesn't know, how am I supposed to?"
A year, huh… well, that was fair enough.
"You at least know how adventurer ranks and request ranks are calculated, right?"
"Of course."
"And you know there are ranks above Gold?"
"I know that much."
The Adventurers' Guild sorted requests into four broad categories: gathering, subjugation, escort, and transport. Each request was then graded by danger level from F-rank up through A-rank.
Anything up through C-rank covered small fry that didn't pose much real harm. B-rank threats could single-handedly raze a small village. An A-rank threat could annihilate a city the size of the one we were sitting in right now.
"Request ranks work the same way."
Gathering, escort, and transport almost never climbed higher than B-rank, no matter how difficult. Subjugation requests, though, frequently exceeded A-rank danger levels.
Which was why—
"Dangerous entities that can't even be classified as A-rank — threats capable of becoming national-scale catastrophes — those get classified as Disaster-class."
Adventurers who proved they had the skill to contribute to the subjugation of such Disaster-class threats were ranked above Gold: Mithril rank.
"Ahh."
"I see."
"And as an addendum," Frederica chimed in with a bright smile as Huey and Lucy nodded along to my explanation, "preventing those Disaster-class entities from being born in the first place — or subjugating the ones that already have — is the Hero's job."
"Anything else you're curious about?"
"Not for now."
"So basically… you're saying we have to go somewhere that has one of those dangerous entities?"
That was about the size of it.
"What do you want to do?"
"…It'll be dangerous, of course. But if there's even a slim chance of getting home, I want to go."
"Haaah. Well, I suppose there's no helping it."
As for me, if the client insisted, I'd just tag along.
Huey was smiling apologetically at Lucy when Frederica spoke again.
"Fufu. Huey, you really do seem cut out to be an adventurer."
She rose from her seat, walked over to him, and patted his head.
"Huh? Um…"
"Knowing the danger and still challenging it for the sake of your goal. That's something truly important for an adventurer."
"Ah… thank you."
With an uncharacteristically gentle smile, she gave Huey's head a few light taps.
"What's with the sudden nonsense? Your image is already shot — it's way too late to try rebuilding it now."
Of course, I knew exactly what she was up to with that little performance, so I cut in immediately. The instant I felt the surge of mana that followed, I ducked my head in a hurry.
Whoosh!
"Hey! Watch it!"
I shouted as a single thread of silk whistled past overhead with a dangerous sound.
"You always have one word too many."
Frederica's gaze, thick with killing intent, locked onto me.
"Anyway, that's all the information I have to pass along."
Saying she needed to get back to work herself, Frederica stood.
"The Hero is currently resting at the Great Temple in Arcadia, so if you rest for about two days and then set out, the timing should line up nicely."
"Thanks."
We left the castle with Frederica waving us off behind us.
"…Just what did Frederica do to keep the lord from saying a single word?"
"When we ran into him on the way out, I honestly thought we were done for."
"She handled it somehow, I'm sure."
Judging by the cold sweat pouring off him the second our eyes met, it looked a lot more like intimidation than persuasion — but whatever. Not my problem to worry about.
Growl.
"I'm hungry. Let's get something to eat."
My stomach was already signaling for food, so I called out to the two of them as they hurried ahead, clearly eager to put as much distance between themselves and the castle as possible.
"Come to think of it, lunchtime already passed."
"If I'd known it would turn out like this, I would have cadged a meal while we were at the castle."
Huey and Lucy nodded — apparently they were just as hungry.
"Alright. How about the Adventurers' Guild building? This branch has a cafeteria."
"Sounds good."
Ah, you saw those from time to time — branches that set up taverns or restaurants under the pretext of fostering smooth cooperation among adventurers.
"A restaurant run out of an Adventurers' Guild building… the food should be solid, at least."
I wondered how many people actually knew that most of those branches existed purely because of the branch master's extremely personal tastes.
"We'll grab lunch first, then pick up a few jobs we can knock out over the next two days and earn some coin."
"Hopefully there are some requests that actually pay well."
"…Thinking about food just made me hungrier."
And so the first meeting between Huey, Luciella, and Frederica came to an end. We turned our efforts back toward preparing for the journey ahead — each of us chasing our own goals.