Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Six: Those Who Aspire 2
“Hey, girls, are you rookie adventurers from out of town?”
“Come with us. We’ll teach you how things are done at the Adventurers’ Guild in Ehlertt’s capital.”
“No way, that very cliché!?”
Blocked by the two male adventurers, Karen let out a delighted cry. Karen the alchemist, twenty years in this world. Having grown up known to the local adventurers from birth in the adventurers’ district, she had never once had the chance to experience this particular isekai fantasy.
“A cli… cliché? What’s that?”
The men were confused. Ottilie was confused too, for that matter.
“My apologies, Lady Karen. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with it either…”
“No, I don’t think anyone here would be…”
It was, in a sense, a cry that only Karen could understand.
“Are you mocking us?”
“Tch! We were gonna cut you some slack, but not anymore!”
The adventurers were starting to get irritated. They had taken Karen’s group for adventurers from out of town, but what sort of kindness had they even been planning to show them? The guild clerk simply muttered "no trouble inside the guild" and showed no sign of actually intervening.
Karen and Ottilie didn’t flinch in the slightest even as the adventurers—each twice their size—began to make their anger plain. Ottilie was the award winner at the hunting festival, so she might well have been stronger than they. And Karen, while she couldn’t gauge their strength exactly, felt no fear of them either.
“You’ve got guts, Karen.”
“Dragons are way scarier, honestly.”
“Well, obviously.”
While Teresa and Karen whispered to each other, one of the muscular adventurers slammed his club against the floor. Even Teresa gave a start and froze up at that. Karen shifted her position to shield Teresa.
Just what were these men planning to do to Karen, Ottilie, and Teresa—
“Hey! Don’t damage the floor!”
“But boss—some outsider’s using a local kid for who-knows-what scheme! How are we supposed to look the other way!?”
They turned out to be perfectly decent people. There was a misunderstanding, and they were being confrontational about it, but Karen felt herself relax. This was what she loved about adventurers, what made her fond of them. A lot of them were simple and straightforward people, but they didn’t blindly worship strength alone.
“What are you smiling about?”
“You think we can’t stop you!?”
“Well, the thing is—”
Just as Karen was about to calmly explain things to the advancing adventurers, a crushing wave of magical pressure—like standing before a dragon—swept through the guild. The next instant, the two adventurers in front of her were lifted off the ground.
“What do you think you’re doing to Sis, huh?”
“Oh, Thor. Wait, wait—there’s been a misunderstanding!”
Thor had both adventurers in iron claws from behind, gripping each by the back of the head, and he furrowed his brow at Karen as she tried to intervene.
“Even if there was some kind of misunderstanding, you wouldn’t do anything that deserves getting yelled at, would you? So they’re the ones at fault for jumping to conclusions, right?”
“It really isn’t that simple, so let them go! They’re good people!”
“They can be good people to everyone else all they want—if they’re rude to Sis, that’s not okay.”
“Thor!”
Thor pursed his lips and flung the still-struggling adventurers away. For all that the adventurers had arms like logs, thick with training, Thor’s arms that had sent them flying were slender by comparison. Yet the two adventurers sailed through the air in an arc that nearly grazed the ceiling, only to be caught by their fellow adventurers nearby.
Gleaming on Thor’s chest was a crimson pendant engraved with a sword and staff—the mark of an A-rank adventurer. The scarletite pendant suited Thor perfectly, especially since he wielded a war hammer forged from a scarletite alloy. Looking over, the members of Thor’s party waiting near the entrance all wore the same red pendants at their chests.
“Why were those guys picking a fight with you, Sis?”
“They were trying to stop me because they thought I was going to do something awful to this girl.”
Karen glanced at Teresa as she said it. Teresa was hunched over, trembling. She must have been overwhelmed by Thor’s pressure. The pressure itself had been milder than it was with the dragon, and it hadn’t been directed at Karen—she’d only been startled—but even Ottilie’s color looked a little off.
“There’s no way you’d do something awful to a kid, Sis.”
“Well… Again, it’s not quite that simple.”
Becoming an adventurer was Teresa’s own choice, and since talking her out of it would be pointless, Karen had agreed to support her. That was the reality of it—but setting that aside, from the outside, Karen was an adult sending a talentless, magicless child to work as an adventurer.
“I’m placing a very small amount of hope in this girl—hoping she might do something remarkable. And to put that hope to the test, I’m about to send her somewhere so dangerous that all hundred people out of a hundred would try to stop it. I intend to support her so she doesn’t die easily—but I can’t guarantee she absolutely won’t die.”
Her past-life self would have tried to talk Teresa out of the adventurer path entirely. But Karen now would not take that road. Besides, she couldn’t force Teresa to do anything. So at least help her, help her avoid death—under that pretext, Karen was, as Teresa had said, no different from using the girl as a test subject.
“I really am planning to do something awful. So it’s only natural for a decent person to try to stop me. Make sure you apologize to those two later.”
“If you say so, I guess.”
Thor sighed, accepted it, and looked down at Teresa, who was still staring at the floor.
“So this is the kid you’re planning to sponsor besides us?”
“Yep. Her name’s Teresa.”
Surprisingly, Teresa kept her eyes down and hid herself behind Karen’s back. She had bitten back at Julius without a second thought when he’d put pressure on her—was she actually afraid of Thor? He had been more intense, it was true… Karen was still analyzing that when Thor crouched down to Teresa’s eye level.
“I’m Thor. I lead the party Crimson Thunder, and as adventurers with Sis as our sponsor, I’m your senior. Good to have a fellow sponsored adventurer on board, Teresa.”
He held out his hand as he said it, and Teresa hesitantly reached out and took it. When the handshake was done, Thor walked off into the back of the guild at an easy pace. He and his party apparently had business at the Ehlertt capital’s Adventurers’ Guild.
“See you later, Ms. Karen.”
Wanda and the rest of the party trailed behind Thor. It was an area restricted to high-ranking adventurers. The guild clerks hurried to receive them.
“So that woman’s the sister of Crimson Thunder, the one who conquered the thirtieth floor—”
“His sister… you mean that one who recently became a lord!?”
At that point, Karen’s identity was obviously no secret anymore.
“You are Karen the alchemist—Master Julius’s wife!”
“Exactly!”
“You haven’t actually gotten married yet.”
Ottilie cut in with a cool correction as Karen played along, and they made their escape from the Adventurers’ Guild.
Once they were in the carriage, Karen called out to Teresa, who was being oddly quiet:
“Teresa, are you alright? Thor looks intimidating, but he’s not a scary person—”
“—I shook hands with an A-rank adventurer.”
“Hm?”
She had been shaking a moment ago, but when Teresa raised her head, her eyes were glistening.
“You’re really his sister? That’s amazing, that’s incredible, that’s unbelievable! I talked to an A-rank adventurer! That’s so cool!”
Teresa’s eyes were watery, her mouth trembling, her face red with excitement. She hadn’t been shaking with fear of Thor—she had been shaking with awe.
Karen blinked at the unexpected reaction.
“Julius is just as strong as any high-ranking adventurer, though. Don’t you think you’re treating them completely differently?”
“An adventurer and a nobleman are totally different! He conquered the thirtieth floor—an A-rank adventurer!”
For Teresa, high-ranking adventurers were something special. Karen had mentioned her connection to Thor before, but it seemed Teresa had only been half-listening to her all along.
“Fellow adventurers with the same sponsor, he said! Ehehe!”
The part about that sponsor being Karen herself seemed to have gone completely over her head, and in her excitement, she kept flailing her legs, repeatedly kicking Karen in the shin. Karen stopped Ottilie from saying something about it.
She watched with a warm smile as Teresa rejoiced with a carefree innocence she had never shown before—like a child, purely and simply happy.
The Translator’s Small Note
I previously translated that Thor’s hammer was made of orichalcum, but “scarletite” is a more accurate translation. Well, the literal translation would be “hihi’irokane,” but that sounds too Japanese.
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