[Emergency] Claim the Irregular Newcomer First
The explorer guild.
The branch chief’s office.
The atmosphere in this place was dozens of times heavier than usual.
A former A-rank explorer with forty years of experience.
Even Gallidus, the veteran who had seen every kind of battlefield, could not suppress the cold sweat running down his back in this moment.
The reason was simple.
Standing before him were the true rulers of Astaroth.
The S-rank representatives of the Seven Stars guilds had gathered.
Monsters whose names alone could erase an entire city from existence.
The abnormal pressure they radiated made the furniture in the room groan as though it were screaming.
“……That girl has already entered the labyrinth.”
Gallidus reported in a trembling voice.
A suffocating silence fell.
The one who shattered it was the representative of Red Star Balack.
“Oh my, you’re all so quick on your feet. I was the first to recognize that child’s value, you know.”
A woman with flowing red hair swept it back arrogantly as she laughed.
Chwaak—!
She flicked open her folding fan and swept her gaze across the room.
The killing intent in her crimson eyes took physical form and scraped across the floor.
“My mood is about to get extremely bad. All because of the pig bastards gathered here.”
“Hah! The pig with a rag in its mouth is you, you crazy bitch from Balack.”
The representative of Gold Star Midas, the ledger-keeper Bergmann, snorted and tapped his jewel-encrusted cane.
“You’ve never even met her, yet you’re putting on this whole show? That child is destined to enter a very ‘deep’ contractual relationship with our financial union. There’s nothing money can’t solve.”
“Oh my. My mood has officially been ruined.”
The moment the Red Flame Camiris wiped the smile from her face, crimson mana surged around her.
“I’ll kill you right here, you money-grubbing bastard.”
“Try it. I wouldn’t waste a single gold coin on a bitch like you.”
Their mana collided.
A sharp crack split the ceiling of the branch chief’s office.
“I’ll make your tombstone out of silver coins.”
Gallidus’s face turned deathly pale.
At that moment, the woman from Black Star Morgana let out a secretive chuckle.
“Ufufu, you’re all so impatient. A super rookie appearing after twenty years? She’s quite the precious little toy, isn’t she?”
Venenosa ran a finger slowly across her black-lipsticked lips.
“I hear that child uses a dagger. It just so happens we have a Basilisk’s Venom Blade from the master of the eighth floor in our warehouse. She’d absolutely adore it as a gift.”
“Data mismatch.”
The executive from White Star Arcana muttered in a voice stripped of all emotion.
He flipped through the magic scroll floating in the air as he scanned Nixie’s report.
“Subjugation of harpy original species. Discrepancy rate between measured values and actual combat achievements exceeds 800%. Impossible to comprehend. Designated for detailed investigation.”
“No way! That child is mine… no, she belongs to us♡”
The representative of Purple Star Lucid blushed and let her eyes sparkle.
She clasped her hands together and trembled as if she were the heroine of a romance novel.
“I saw a future where I walk through the labyrinth’s dreams together with that child♡ The threads of fate are wrapping around us so tightly!”
“I heard she’s a very beautiful child, nyan. She gives off an elegant, noble wild-cat vibe, nyan?”
The executive from Blue Star Siren swished her tail and glanced at the girl from Green Star Gaia.
“You have nothing to say, nyan? You usually love butting in about ecosystem order and all that… nyan.”
The girl from Green Star Gaia, who had been quietly fiddling with her teacup in the corner, flinched.
When every gaze suddenly pinned her in place, she shrank her shoulders and lowered her head.
“I-I… only came because the guild master told me to… I don’t really have any interest in fights like this……”
“Ah, I see, nyan.”
Lanya turned away as if she had lost interest.
Iris gave a tiny nod and lowered her eyes back to her teacup.
“Yeah… I’d prefer it if you all didn’t fight. The labyrinth would be sad……”
She spoke and then pressed her lips tightly shut again.
“Still… that child does feel a little strange.”
All eyes snapped back to Iris.
She set her teacup down with a trembling hand and murmured.
“Gaia told me… that child is ‘special’…… Is that why? I think I’m getting a little curious too……”
In an instant, the noisy conference room fell as silent as if someone had poured cold water over it.
The S-ranks’ eyes flashed.
It was not mere competitive spirit, but a predator’s instinctive curiosity that filled their gazes.
Yet all Gallidus wanted to do was collapse to the floor beneath that crushing pressure.
Please, just don’t start fighting here. Never mind the branch office getting blown away—the whole city might end up sliced in half.
The monsters had begun to move.
All of them heading for the single piece of prey that had vanished into the labyrinth.
I roughly shoved the green herb I had torn in half straight into Lucia’s mouth.
“Ugh…!! Ueeek——!!”
“Don’t spit it out. Chew.”
Lucia instinctively gagged and tried to resist.
I clamped her jaw shut with a firm grip.
“Don’t swallow. Squeeze the juice out and let it slide down your throat. That’s the only way to clear your airway.”
Lucia’s eyes flew open in shock at my touch.
But she clearly had no strength left to fight back. Tears streamed down her face as she began chewing the herb exactly as ordered.
“Good medicine always tastes bitter. Chew it properly.”
After that I crushed the remaining herb dregs in my palm.
“Hand.”
“…Yes?”
“Give me your hand.”
I smeared it across Lucia’s wrist.
Ah, and up the back of her neck too.
“Hya…! It’s cold…!”
“Poison mist poisoning isn’t solved just by watching your breathing.”
The mana toxins that burrow into skin and mucous membranes are the real danger.
If you don’t deal with them in time, they can burn out your mana circuits completely.
“Uuuugh… It feels awful……”
“Endure it. You’re not a child.”
A short while later, Lucia’s breathing finally began to stabilize.
Her ragged gasps grew quieter, and a faint hint of color returned to her previously blue lips.
She looked up at me with dazed eyes.
“Am… I alive?”
“For the moment. More importantly, pull yourself together. This is the second stratum. Stay spaced out and a monster will come say hello first.”
I answered indifferently while readjusting my bag strap.
Only then did Lucia look around. Fear washed over her and she curled into herself.
“……Thank you. For me to cause you trouble like this again……”
“Forget the thanks—what do you mean, trouble?”
I lightly scattered some mana around us for vigilance, then sat Lucia down against a nearby tree root.
“You didn’t come alone, right? Where’s your party?”
Lucia fidgeted with her fingers and avoided my eyes.
“W-well… they went back to the first stratum for a bit……”
“They abandoned you.”
At my blunt statement, Lucia’s shoulders jerked violently.
“N-no! They said they’d come get me soon! They even left a flare like this…!”
I pointed at the completely burned-out flare casing rolling on the ground.
“If they actually planned to come back for you, they would have left at least one more flare. Leaving a priest with a broken staff here is the same as telling her to die. Isn’t it?”
Lucia’s head drooped.
The undeniable truth seemed to crush the girl beneath its weight.
If they’re willing to abandon a D-rank priest, just how trash is that party?
Or perhaps Lucia really was beyond saving.
I asked again to confirm.
“You’re a priest, right? So why are you stuck here with a broken staff?”
Lucia stammered as she explained the situation.
The story was exactly what I expected.
“They said I couldn’t heal… that I wasn’t priest-like… and everyone was scared of me.”
“Scared? Why would they be scared if you can’t heal? Annoyed, maybe, but scared?”
Yet there was one unusual detail.
Lucia answered in a tiny, embarrassed voice, her face flushed.
“Well… my hands moved before I could stop them……”
“Hands?”
“I gathered holy power to cast a healing spell, but the chant wouldn’t come out, so I just… hit them with it.”
“……You hit them? While it was wrapped in healing magic?”
Lucia stared down at her own hand.
It was slender and pale, but her knuckles were covered in calluses that definitely did not belong to a priest.
I get the picture.
She was hopeless at emitting healing mana outward, but she had a natural talent for condensing it inside her own body.
She gathered the mana to heal, the chant failed, so she simply punched it into them.
From the party’s perspective that must have been pure terror.
A priest who should be healing from the rear was instead throwing healing punches from the front line.
“After that they said it was too unsettling, that staying with me was even more dangerous……”
Lucia sniffled again.
“This time too, because I messed up again… they said they were going to reorganize on the first floor, so I should wait here for a bit……”
“……Are you kind or just stupid?”
They had clearly abandoned her here to dispose of the baggage named Lucia.
What absolute trash.
“Get up.”
I rose slowly.
Lucia’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes…?”
“We’re escaping. You think they’re going to come if you just sit here forever? They’re not coming.”
“B-but……”
“Keep whining and I’ll leave you behind.”
“N-no!”
Lucia flailed and scrambled to her feet.
Her legs still had no strength, however, and she staggered around in a rather comical fashion.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her upright.
“Stand straight. I know the way out, so shut up and follow me.”
“Y-yes… Thank you.”
Lucia hesitated for a moment, then asked in a quiet voice.
“Um… may I ask your name?”
“Nyx Gre… No. My name is Nixie Ocelot.”
Lucia carefully repeated my name.
“Nixie… miss?”
“Miss? Just call me Nixie.”
“Ah, I’m sorry… You look so young… Was that rude?”
“…It’s fine. Call me whatever you want.”
We slowly began making our way out of the forest.
Lucia still seemed anxious; she clutched the hem of my clothes and tried to silence her footsteps.
I’ve gained one piece of baggage.
I spent three hundred silver on that herb and all I got was this crybaby priest.
The math was nowhere near adding up.
We had barely taken a few steps when Lucia suddenly stopped.
“Um… Nixie.”
“What? Feeling weak again?”
Lucia shook her head and pointed toward the dark space on our left.
“It would be better not to go left……”
I examined the left side.
…It looks like a perfectly normal stretch of poison mist forest.
I sensed no monster presence and no scent of traps.
“Why? Do you see something?”
“No, it’s not that I see anything… I just have this feeling that if we go that way, I won’t be able to breathe……”
I narrowed my eyes and studied the ground.
Faint marks pressed into the mud.
The trace of a poison plant’s roots slithering past.
Beside them were multiple overlapping poison hound footprints.
She’s right.
Even I, a fifteen-year veteran of the labyrinth, would have missed those traces if I hadn’t looked carefully.
A little farther on, Lucia tugged my sleeve again.
“The path ahead also… feels suspicious.”
“What now?”
“There’s no sound… It feels like something is holding its breath and waiting.”
I stared quietly at the forest in front of us.
“……It really is strange.”
The second-stratum poison mist forest is normally filled with the flapping of poisonous insects and the screams of trees.
Yet only the ten-meter stretch ahead was wrapped in an unnatural, almost surgically imposed silence.
“A monster ambush.”
“Probably… It seems that way.”
Cold sweat beaded on Lucia’s forehead.
This girl wasn’t simply timid.
Her ability to sense danger was abnormally sharp.
That was when it happened.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrr……”
“Grk……”
The poison mist swirled and split apart in every direction.
Beast-like growls began echoing from straight ahead.
Poison hounds.
But the howls did not belong to just one creature.
Two. Three. Five……
“Haa. Of course they weren’t just going to let us leave.”
A pack of beasts drooling black saliva closed in, surrounding us.
Wind Blade
A sharp green wind aura coils around the dagger.
I wrapped Wind Blade around my dagger.
The green sword energy swirled and settled silently over the blade.
“Grrrrr……”
“Grrrl… Grrrr……”
The poison hounds all lowered their bodies at once.
I bent my knees and focused mana into the ground.
“Lucia. Whatever you do, do not leave my back. Understand?”
“Y-yes!”
Lucia clenched her fists tightly.