Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Five: Those Who Aspire
“Blech.”
After touring Karen’s secret alchemist-training orphanage, Teresa had made her way back to the garden and pretended to throw up.
“Isn’t that a bit harsh?”
“I was being con-sid-er-ate? Or trying to be. Didn’t do it in front of the kids, did I?”
She was a child herself, but being among the older ones apparently meant she did have some capacity for consideration toward younger children. What made this girl remarkable was that she reserved her insolence strictly for adults who could take it.
“I think it’s a pretty comfortable environment, honestly.”
“Too comfortable. They’ll go soft.”
Teresa wrinkled her nose and spat the words out.
“If you’re planning to take care of them for the rest of their lives, fine, but if they grow up in a place like that, they won’t be able to go anywhere else.”
“Then they can stay with me for the rest of their lives.”
“Huh? You’re not their parent. What are you on about?”
“I only just got my territory, and I could use all the hands I can get. I can find work for as many people as want it.”
“Right, you’re a… lord now. Hah. No matter how many times I hear it, it sounds like sleeptalking.”
Karen had considered the possibility that seeing the children might change Teresa’s mind and looked into options for taking her in—but Teresa, it seemed, was set on the adventurer’s path after all.
“Well then, shall we head to the Adventurers’ Guild?”
Today was the day Teresa would officially register as an adventurer. And Karen was going along to register as Teresa’s sponsor.
“Lady Karen, the carriage is ready.”
“Thank you very much, Lady Ottilie.”
“Please, just Ottilie.”
When Ottilie smiled, she was beautiful—but above all, dignified. Quite different from the impression she’d made when they first met. The unsettling thing about Ottilie was how plausible it seemed that she was intentionally putting on this poised, gallant persona to make herself more appealing to Karen.
“Is that scary man not coming today?”
Teresa had been peering around like a small animal on alert—apparently looking for Julius.
“You mean Julius? He’s gone to pick someone up.”
“Pick up who?”
“One of my supporters is moving here from the royal capital with his whole family. He sent me a letter saying they’d finished packing, so Julius went to bring them here.”
Sepl had decided to move to the Ehlertt territory together with his wife Lily and their baby. Urte had chosen to stay in the capital with her husband Aaron, taking up a role as a guard at the alchemy workshop.
The alchemy workshop in the capital was set to keep running as Karen’s shop as before, and Yuluyana and Ahim were still in and out of the place regularly, so not having alchemy knowledge herself wasn’t a problem—or rather, as Urte complained in her letter, the pair were so noisy that she could never get a moment’s peace.
“A supporter—that’s one of those has-been adventurers who couldn’t cut it anymore, right? Ow!”
Karen flicked Teresa on her bare forehead for the rude remark. Teresa ended up nursing the spot for longer than Karen had expected.
“Oh—sorry. My magical power has been growing lately, and I haven’t quite gotten control of my strength. Do you want a potion?”
“…Yes.”
Karen handed the half-tearful Teresa a potion bottle, and Teresa didn’t use it—she tucked it straight into her pocket with practiced efficiency. Karen had seen it coming, so she looked the other way.
“Honestly, you’re so cheeky. One of these days, it’s going to come back to bite you.”
“I’m getting it right now.”
“That’s nowhere near enough to teach you a lesson.”
Karen bundled Teresa—who was sticking her tongue out—into the carriage, then climbed in with Ottilie, and they set off for the Adventurers’ Guild.
“Look! I brought my sponsor! So now I can officially become an adventurer, right?”
“Guess there are weirdos willing to become a guardian for someone with no magical power.”
“Sponsor, not guardian!”
“Yeah, yeah, alright…”
The man at the Adventurers’ Guild reception desk shot Karen a sharp look.
“Seriously, what kind of work do you expect a kid like this to do?”
He had the face of a hardened thug, but was a decent enough person. He didn’t think it was acceptable to let Teresa die just because she had no magical power. That was precisely why Teresa was still only a trainee.
“Ideally, I’d like her to start with something like herb-gathering, at first—”
“I’m gonna go around smashing monsters, obviously! I’m not wasting my time picking herbs!”
Teresa declared it boldly. The receptionist’s face twisted with distaste. Karen sighed and pressed the point.
“You know better than anyone that you don’t have that kind of strength, right?”
“…Tch! Shut up!”
“You have a gift for concealing your presence, so you’d be better off developing that and aiming for a style that lets you catch monsters off guard. At least in the beginning.”
“A gift for concealing my presence?”
Teresa blinked at her, and Karen tilted her head slightly.
“Did I not mention it? You have a real talent for concealing your presence, Teresa. It’s because you have no magical power.”
“Because I have no magical power…”
“If you take that talent to its limit—you can make yourself undetectable even to S-rank monsters.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
The receptionist grumbled under his breath as he went through the process of registering Teresa as an F-rank adventurer. Technically, there was no age restriction on becoming an adventurer. But the Adventurers’ Guild sometimes turned away children who were too young. A child with no backing who became an adventurer almost always died immediately.
Neither Karen nor Ottilie had intended to draw attention to themselves, so both wore cloaks with their hoods pulled up, their faces largely hidden. Even if the receptionist happened to know Karen’s face, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Which meant he almost certainly had no idea she was one of the members who had taken down the black dragon.
But Teresa knew.
“Seriously…?”
“Seriously.”
“Suuure you are!”
Theresa, who knew the truth and still couldn’t believe it, wore exactly the same expression as the receptionist, and Karen almost burst out laughing.
“Once her adventurer registration is finished, I’d like to register myself as her sponsor as well.”
“You sure you understand how the sponsor system works? It’s a system where you support a well-known adventurer in exchange for them promoting your goods. It’s not the same as donating to an orphan.”
“I understand how it works, thank you.”
“People do sponsor promising high-ranking adventurers or noble brats, but you don’t seriously think this kid’s going to make it big, do you?”
“It’s a huge gamble, but I think she has a chance.”
The receptionist looked as though he’d bitten into something sour. Beside Karen, Teresa’s expression was squirming with something halfway between embarrassed and pleased—but when she noticed Karen looking at her, she snapped her gaze back with a glare.
“What are you looking at? Huh?”
“Such rough manners.”
Karen laughed and completed the sponsor registration. The signature was simply Karen. Until she traveled to the capital in spring, secured an audience with the king, and received the formal conferral of her title, she was still a commoner on paper.
“Karen…?”
The receptionist murmured to himself. She hadn’t used the Himmel name, so she’d assumed she wouldn’t be recognized—but at the sight of Karen’s signature, the receptionist’s face took on the look of someone trying to remember something.
Just how well known was Karen in Ehlertt? Last year, she had apparently been quite the topic of conversation as the protagonist of a real-life Cinderella story, so perhaps her name alone was fairly recognizable.
Not wanting to attract attention, Karen, Ottilie, and Teresa moved to leave quickly—and found a figure stepping into their path.
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