The Staff
A sharp, unnatural crack split the air.
Not long after we had backed away, a tiny sapling abruptly pushed its way up out of the ground.
Compared to all that grand fanfare, the result looked pathetic — but it was only the beginning.
Krrrrrkk!
The sapling began to swell, sponge-like, its body ballooning to dozens of times its original size.
Was this what it would feel like to fast-forward decades of recorded footage?
In no time at all the thing had grown big enough to be called a tree, stretching higher and ever higher.
Thump...
Only when its crown touched the ceiling did the tree finally stop its fantasy-like growth spurt.
A gaunt, bone-white tree without a single leaf on it.
There was no mistaking it, no matter where you looked — it was unmistakably the Tree of Longing we had fought.
"Whoa... it's gonna pump out a ton of honey."
Lena's eyes went wide with awe. Amy clapped her hands and laughed as if it were her own accomplishment.
"This is great! Now you'll have a steady stream of income!"
"The guild had better manage it properly, though. Honey production isn't exactly fixed, so someone could skim off the top..."
"Don't worry, I'll check on it regularly. Honestly, there wasn't much to do as your dedicated receptionist anyway, so this works out nicely."
Guh.
What was with this dazzling, radiant integrity?
Unlike a standard commission, there was no separate payment involved, yet she had naturally appointed herself the tree's caretaker as if it were simply her job.
I even felt a strange kind of... obligation to answer such goodwill.
"Take ten percent of our share of the honey. Spend it however you like."
"Really?"
"Consider it a bonus. Good incentives make for good work."
In the north, where the Tree of Longing didn't grow, Desert Honey was a rare prize people couldn't get even with money on the table.
A raw elixir that directly benefited your health without any special processing — truly precious stuff. She could use it herself, or share it with family and friends.
Amy beamed and threw her arms around me.
"Thank you!"
"Ahem!"
A faint scent of citrus drifted softly into my nose...
And I could feel the most generously endowed chest among the young receptionists pressing against me.
Hrrm.
"Should I get you a bed?"
"Kyaa!"
At Lena's wicked joke, Amy leapt away from me in a flash.
Where did this kid learn to crack jokes like some smarmy middle-aged man...
Shfffff...
While we were busy with our little comedy routine, the fully grown tree gave its whole body a shake.
It looked for all the world like it was stretching after a long nap.
It gathered roughly a third of its sprawling branches together into one place.
The same motion it had used back in the dungeon, when it formed those mouths to absorb mana.
My hand went to my sword on reflex.
"...Is it dangerous?"
"No. It's fine. It appears to be trying to give us something."
Noah, far from retreating, stepped closer to the tree and held me back.
AI or not, surely she couldn't read a tree's expression.
"How can you tell?"
"Hm... well. It's a strange sensation. Somehow, I feel connected to the tree. Perhaps because I used my own mana to activate it?"
"Oh! That might actually be it! It looks bizarre, but an artifact is an artifact... so there could be some invisible link. Besides, artifacts rarely harm their own masters. Being an unregistered artifact, it's probably just exhibiting unusual behavior."
Krrrunch!
While the whole party, Amy included, chattered away, the gathered branches compressed tighter and tighter.
Compress, compress, compress...
After repeated rounds of compression, the bundle of branches was now barely thicker than a fist.
Thock!
The tree then severed the compressed branch from itself and dropped it to the ground below.
The branch tumbled end over end, then stabbed into the dirt and came to rest, just barely upright.
Length was maybe sixty centimeters or so?
"...Looks like it gave it to us to use, doesn't it? Some kind of material?"
"Unni, pick it up!"
Noah reached out.
"Hmm... it's heavier than it looks."
"Well, it's dozens of branches compressed together, so that tracks."
"What would you even use this f— oh."
Noah, who had been turning the branch over this way and that, suddenly let out a gasp of admiration.
The reason was simple: the branch had reshaped itself.
The wriggling, squirming branch finally stopped moving right around the time it had become an elegantly crafted wooden staff.
"Ooh! Unni, you look like a real mage! I mean, you're not actually a... mage or anything."
Lena was mid-ramble, words firing off like a machine gun, when she caught Amy's eye and smoothly backpedaled.
I had hammered it into her repeatedly: it would be a problem if word got out that someone who hadn't received the Baptism could use magic.
...Somewhere along the way, Noah's very existence had gradually turned into a Magic Tower state secret.
Stroking the staff, Noah seemed to sense something, then gave it a sharp flick of the wrist.
Thwack!
The staff vanished, and what remained in Noah's hand was a limp, dangling whip.
So it can transform its shape like that, too.
Apparently even the whip attacks the Tree of Longing originally used were possible with it.
"Fascinating. A multifunctional..."
"Hold on!"
Just as Noah was about to explain our newly acquired staff(?) artifact to us, Amy hastily wedged herself between us and stopped her.
Amy lowered her voice.
"You should probably keep that a secret."
"Huh? Why?"
"Adventurers should always have a trump card or two up their sleeves. Sure, when you first register with the guild you have to report most of your abilities — the guild needs that to gauge your strength — but..."
"Ah. So you're saying that afterward, there's no need to lay all your cards on the table?"
"Exactly. Your party's combat strength is more than sufficient as it is. And this time... you happen to have obtained an artifact without anyone knowing. There's not even a scrap of evidence for anyone to guess from."
Amy gestured for us to hurry outside, adding that we should discuss things like this only among ourselves.
We waved goodbye to the tree, which was still cheerfully swaying its branch back and forth, and left the underground farm.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
"I'll fill you in on the details back at the inn. Just in case someone's listening."
"Good call."
"Ugh... you're gonna give me paranoia."
We slipped out of the guild and headed for the inn.
Ever since the knights had set up checkpoints, ordinary folk had long since stopped wandering the streets, and the city was fairly quiet.
But having been burned once by Jeres, our guard was up.
"You three there. Stop a moment."
"...Us?"
We were nearly at the inn when a sharply dressed knight abruptly blocked our path.
Another checkpoint?
I sighed and reached for my guild card.
"Ah, no need. I already know you're guild members. I have a few questions, so if you'd come this way..."
"...?"
The knight led us into a nearby alley.
The buildings weren't especially tall, but the shadows swallowed the lane whole, giving the back street a rather gloomy air.
I doubted a knight was about to turn highwayman, but you never knew, so I quietly tensed my body against any eventuality.
As it turned out, all that preparation was pointless.
The knight's purpose was not an interrogation. It was an introduction.
"Good day to you."
"...The butler? Is that you?"
"It is. We meet again."
Besides the knight, one more man waited in the alley.
He was dressed in the utterly ordinary clothes of a commoner, with sooty grime smeared across his face and the hem of his coat.
Still, I could faintly make out the features of the butler Harrington had once sent us as a guide, and I barely managed to catch that he was wearing a disguise.
"Then I'll take my leave."
"Thank you, Sir Riano."
"Think nothing of it."
The knight exchanged a brief bow with Harrington's butler and vanished off somewhere.
The butler addressed me with a courtesy that sat oddly with his disheveled appearance.
"I hear you had an audience with Jeres."
"...Your information travels fast."
"You are a person of interest. So says the branch manager himself. Although... what of that artifact of yours?"
"See for yourself."
I pulled the recording device Harrington had lent us from my pocket.
The metal orb was still glowing red.
The butler accepted the orb with a faint smile.
"So he was using a mental technique after all. And one that acted directly on the body, no less..."
"Honestly, wasn't this the kind of case you could have guessed at? He was courting us quite openly."
"Unlike my master, there are plenty of nobles with no grip on reality. Evidence like this should be more than enough to persuade the skeptics among them."
The butler delivered his scathing review of the other nobles as he tucked the orb away.
Persuade, was it?
Were they finally moving into open confrontation with the guild?
"Your compensation... we'll arrange it separately, in the form of sponsorship funds."
"Much appreciated. We've returned the artifact, so we'll be off—"
"One moment."
"?"
The butler stopped us as we turned back toward the inn.
Was there another errand he wanted to hand us?
"An esteemed individual wishes to entrust you with a commission. Please follow me."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The place the butler led us to was the sewers.
Astonishingly, we had descended via a hidden staircase attached to a shabby little house near the alley.
Contrary to my expectation of being choked by a god-awful stench, the sewer was clean.
Cramped, but clean.
Splash, splash...
As we walked single file along the passage where relatively clear water ran shallow, the sound of our splashing bounced off the round outer walls again and again, producing a low, droning echo.
The ceiling was low enough that we had to walk with our heads slightly bowed — everyone except Lena, who could strut along with her chin held high.
The guild's underground farm, and now this. We really were spending a lot of time underground today.
I ventured a careful question to the butler.
"This isn't an ordinary sewer, is it? Some kind of secret passage?"
No sewer could possibly be this narrow and this clean.
Granted, this was a world with magic, but still — this was pushing it.
Sure enough, my guess was right, and the butler nodded.
"Close. Not so grand as a true secret passage... it's nearer to a service tunnel used for moving between the inner and outer walls. Though far more people don't know about it than do. For the record, opening the entrances here requires a specially crafted magic tool. I'd advise against trying to use this place yourselves."
"Pity. So our destination is the inner wall, then?"
"Yes."
'Who on earth wants to see us? It can't be Harrington.'
I tossed out a few more questions after that, trying to pry out the nature of the commission or the identity of the client, but the butler clamped his mouth shut with iron stubbornness.
Well, he'd never been the sociable type... but this time it genuinely felt like he was keeping silent out of necessity.
Once I finally gave up on questions, the underground passage sank into silence.
And so we moved through that uncomfortable stillness for a long while, passing two or three forked junctions, before the butler at last came to a halt at the end of the corridor.
A thick iron door barred our way.
Fsssh!
When the butler pressed something — hidden from my sight — against the sewer door, the heavy iron swung open.
Gesturing for us to go through, he stretched his hand toward the far side, and stepping out beyond the door, we found ourselves inside another building.
A small pantry, to be precise.
Unlike the shabby house on the outer wall, the shelves of provisions crammed into the storeroom told us this was a rather wealthy household.
"This is a storeroom built into the cellar. Go up the stairs and you'll come to the lobby. Take it to the second floor and enter the room with the red wooden door."
"...And you?"
"My guidance ends here. Good day."
Fssshh...
Standing at the rear, still on the other side of the iron door, the butler manipulated it once more and shut it before I could get a word out.
Was he really leaving? I could faintly hear the splash of departing footsteps.
And how exactly are we supposed to get back?
Noah said calmly, "They'll surely see to it for us. That said, whoever summoned us through a secret passage like this must be someone quite high up."
"I just hope it's not some headache of a commission."
"Whatever comes of it, surely it won't be more alarming than Lady Kaya?"
"...Fair point."
I couldn't help but agree with Lena's wry remark.
Truthfully, not many things were scarier than a muscle monster(?) wearing a human skin suit.
Boldly, I pushed open the storeroom door and started up the narrow, winding staircase.