What Are You Gonna Do About It
"I'm going to kill that fortune-teller…"
The fortune-teller had run away.
It was the day I sliced the sky in half.
Fortune-tellers supposedly couldn't read their own futures—but the one in our village either was that gifted, or he'd been running scams on pure street smarts all along, because he foresaw his own fate and fled.
In the end, for all that I'd grown strong, I still had no girlfriend. I had no choice but to swallow that absurdity along with my rage.
If you get strong, you'll get one. If you get strong, you'll get one!
Strength was relative, sure—but someone at my level should objectively count as strong, right? I mean, I cut the sky. The kingdom's knights? They couldn't cut the sky. Trash, basically.
"Why the hell can't I get a girlfriend…"
"If you want a girlfriend that badly, shouldn't you be talking to girls instead of practicing with a sword?"
Lightning struck inside my head at my childhood friend's words. Right—if I wanted a girlfriend, I shouldn't be swinging a sword like an idiot. I should be talking to women.
Which meant I needed to go somewhere with lots of women. If I went somewhere full of girls and showed off my swordsmanship, I'd earn recognition for my strength and make a girlfriend too.
"Alright. I'm going to the city."
"What? How did the conversation get there!?"
"Thanks, Eri! See you later!"
I waved at my childhood friend in thanks for the advice, then headed straight home.
Following the family motto of acting the moment you decide, I got my parents' permission and left the village immediately.
Watching me leave with a single sword at my hip, my childhood friend waved with a hollow expression on her face.
What's with her?
I had no idea why she was making that face.
Watching Evan's retreating figure leave the village, his childhood friend Eri's eyes welled with tears.
I liked him… Idiot. Moron. Dumbass…
He went on about wanting a girlfriend, had time to swing a sword—but no time to look around him?
Eri clenched her fists tight, stomped her feet, and crushed the innocent ground beneath her, pouring out the resentment piled in her chest. She wanted to run after him right then and grab him.
She wanted to seize his sleeve and tell him not to go, not to leave. That there was someone here who liked him. She wanted to shout it.
But after a moment, Eri gave up on stopping Evan and let out a long sigh.
"Fine—someone has to stay and watch the house."
If he failed to find a girlfriend, if he came back whining that he couldn't get a lover—then she'd gently hold him.
Until he realized her arms were the warmest, most comfortable place in the world, and there was no need to leave.
Forever.
For eternity.
"Next!"
"Present your identification. If you don't have one, go over there and…"
The city wasn't that far. I'd been a few times with my father.
But coming alone was a first. That fact made my heart race. It looked no different from the city I'd visited before, so why was my chest pounding like this?
I thumped my chest a few times, drew a deep breath, and looked around. Unlike the village where foot traffic was practically nonexistent, hundreds—thousands—of people thronged the streets here every moment.
Pretty…
And when that many people gathered, beauties gathered in equal measure. I stole glances at the faces of noble young ladies walking the streets, adventurers in leather armor, and warriors in Eastern-style martial arts robes, letting out gasps of admiration.
As expected of a city—so many beauties. It couldn't even compare to the village, where the only girl my age was my childhood friend.
…But what do I do now?
Getting to the city was great, but I had no idea what to do next. Talk to girls? For someone who'd never even held a girl's hand, that was way too hard. Ogling their faces with a dumb grin was the best I could manage.
After standing blankly in the middle of the city blocking traffic for a bit, I started walking with the flow of people.
I need to show off my strength.
For a guy who'd just arrived in the city, seducing women was nearly impossible. A country bumpkin fresh from the sticks had zero charm, and I didn't have the courage for it anyway.
So I just needed to become the kind of man women approached first. A man so attractive that girls came to me without me having to go to them.
And for someone who only knew how to use a sword, there were only a few ways to become that attractive man.
Become a soldier or knight, or become an adventurer.
Soldier's out.
An army reeking of men's sweat was a no-go no matter how I looked at it. And they weren't about to recruit a country bumpkin fresh from the sticks as a knight either.
That left one option. Adventurer.
The Conqueror King—who'd cleared seven dungeons, struck it rich overnight, and retired with dozens of wives—was still my spiritual mentor.
I'll become an adventurer.
I headed straight for the Adventurer Guild. Contrary to my expectation of burly bald men sweating and clustering together, the guild was full of slender elven archers, pretty priestesses, and female knights in heavy armor chatting noisily.
There were muscle-bound guys too, of course, but just the fact that those kinds of women were at the guild was shocking enough.
After ogling the women at the guild for a bit, I approached the reception desk and met the eyes of a receptionist who looked up with an exhausted expression.
"What can I do for you…"
"I'm here to register."
"Alright. Ten elso."
When I put the money on the counter, the exhausted receptionist scooped it up with unbelievable speed. After counting it, she stared blankly at me and jerked her chin.
"Name?"
"Evan. Evan Calshooter."
"Here you go. If you lose it, there's an extra fee for reissue."
The receptionist finished her explanation with the halfhearted air of a civil servant who couldn't be fired no matter what she did, then tossed me a wooden tag with my name on it.
It was different from what I'd imagined. There was no test to assess a newcomer's skill, no gasping in shock at a standout recruit, no process of being recognized as a Highest Class adventurer from the start.
Reality was different from fairy tales.
"…I'm pretty good with a sword, you know."
"Yes. Good for you."
"No, I mean—isn't there some kind of test? Where you take a test and get recognized as an Upper Class adventurer from the start?"
"No, there isn't."
"Why not?"
When I clung on with questions, the receptionist started getting irritated, making her annoyance plain.
"If you want to show off how strong you are, go to the military. We're a guild that introduces jobs to people with the credibility to complete them—not a place for strong people to flex."
"Ah… then how do I raise my rank?"
The receptionist pointed toward a corner of the guild. Where she pointed was a bulletin board covered in papers. I trudged over and realized it was a board collecting requests.
From the lowest-level missions anyone could take regardless of identity or rank, to ultra-high-difficulty missions only Highest Class adventurers could accept.
…So to raise my rank, I have to work through these one by one?
I checked the missions for new adventurers at the bottom. Find an item, find a person, gather some herb, take the vanguard in an upcoming war, and so on—missions anyone could do, that wouldn't stand out.
But if you just raised your gaze a little, there were missions like kill some monster, investigate a danger zone, gather rare herbs—missions where you could make big money and get attention all at once, packed in thick.
For some reason, as I stared at those dust-covered request forms, I had a gut feeling they wouldn't be that hard.
"—Screw it!"
"Wh-what—!?"
After a moment's hesitation, I grabbed the dust-covered request forms and bolted out of the guild.
A voice called after me from behind, but I ignored it. I hadn't committed a crime—I'd just torn off some request forms—so the guild staff didn't chase me that desperately.
After running all the way to the city gate, I caught my breath and recalled what the staff member had said earlier.
You can't take missions without credibility?
I looked down at the mission forms filling my hands. Credibility or not, the mission forms were in my hands right now. Information on where the targets were, what to kill, and what to bring back.
"—What are you gonna do about it?"
If I completed the missions and brought them back, what could the guild do?
Nothing. No matter how I thought about it, there was nothing the guild could do.
They would have no choice but to acknowledge my results.
"Let's go."
My eyes turned beyond the walls, toward the forest full of dangerous monsters.
To the land of overnight riches.
Rebecca, receptionist at the Adventurer Guild, shot to her feet when she saw the newbie who'd just registered tear a bunch of request forms off the board and run away.
"W-wait!"
The newbie who'd torn off a pile of request forms vanished from the guild in an instant. When she looked at her senior as if to ask what now, the senior let out a long sigh, handed her a sheet of paper, and spoke.
"Those are all copies anyway. Go check what's missing and make new ones to put up. …We're busy enough as it is. Just my luck."
"I'll check right away!"
Seeing her senior's irritation maxed out, Rebecca hurried toward the bulletin board. Then she checked the missing request forms.
Every single one was an ultra-high-risk mission that even Upper Class adventurers would have to risk their lives for. And the rewards weren't even that big, so the adventurers who sold their lives for money never took them.
Confirming they were missions nobody would immediately scream about being gone, Rebecca breathed a sigh of relief and returned to her post. Then she put the newly made request forms back on the board.
The matter of the peculiar newbie who'd run off with the request forms was completely forgotten by that evening. The number of people coming and going through a guild that supported adventurers wasn't just one or two, and there were so many peculiar people that standing out a little wasn't enough to be remembered.
Late at night, after the sun had fully set. Rebecca roughly finished her work and waited for the shift change with the next worker. Blankly looking down at documents, pretending to work while thinking about what to do after clocking out.
"…Hey, look over there."
"No way, for real?"
"That's impossible…"
While she was slacking off for a bit, the guild interior started getting a little noisy. Rebecca, who'd been stealing her salary, turned her head wondering what was going on—and her jaw dropped.
The newbie who'd run off with the request forms that afternoon. He'd come back covered head to toe in blood.
"Wh-wha—! A-are you alright!?"
"…I'm not hurt. More importantly, this."
Thud— Evan said that as he set the monster corpses he'd dragged in on the reception desk. Looking at those corpses, Rebecca blankly stared at the monster byproducts, then recalled the request forms he'd taken.
Chimera subjugation, Hydra subjugation, Wyvern subjugation, and so on—ultra-high-difficulty missions that even Upper Class adventurers specializing in monster hunting might or might not succeed at.
"Th-this can't be…"
"What, you won't even accept the corpses because I don't have credibility? That'd be a problem."
"P-please wait just a moment—!"
Rebecca forgot about clocking out and went straight to find the guild master.
Right now, clocking out wasn't important.