Chapter 25
“...This really is an easy job.”
A smile escaped him before he knew it.
The adventurer Geese stood before the entrance to a certain facility.
—‘Adventurer.’
The term referred to people who took on jobs from the Adventurers’ Guild.
An adventurer’s livelihood could take many forms: slaying monsters, guarding important people, and so on.
And anyone could become an adventurer, regardless of their status.
Whether a villager, a criminal, or a noble, anyone could become an adventurer.
But while becoming one was easy, not everyone could make a living as one.
What an adventurer needed was simple.
Just one thing—a pure, unadulterated ‘power.’
No matter how noble their birth or how beloved they were by the people, anyone without ‘power’ couldn’t survive as an adventurer.
Conversely, if they had that power, the door was open to anyone.
So why was an adventurer like him in a place like this?
Geese smiled faintly.
(Still, there’s no easier job than this. It may not be a legitimate job, but...)
The adventurer ranking system was simple.
From F-rank, the gateway for beginners, to C-rank, for those with proven ability, and B-rank, whose members were said to be recognized in any country.
Then there was A-rank, whose members were known throughout the entire nation.
Geese was C-rank. He figured his actual ability was probably at the lower end of the rank.
Well, for his age, he wasn’t doing badly, but he wasn’t doing especially well, either.
Of course, compared to ordinary people, he was far stronger.
If he took legitimate jobs seriously, hoping for a comfortable life, and trained younger adventurers at the guild, he could live quite comfortably.
But Geese wasn’t satisfied with that.
He wanted a better life.
That said, trying to work diligently to raise his rank now would be pointless.
Geese had worked desperately hard to make it to C-rank.
But an adventurer’s rank was absolute.
There was an absolute gap between each rank.
A thick, vast, imposing wall.
After giving up on seriously climbing the ranks, Geese turned to taking on more lucrative jobs.
Geese began frequenting several underworld guilds in addition to the Adventurers’ Guild.
In other words, he started seeking out shadier jobs arranged through the underworld guilds.
Under-the-table work.
It was clearly easier than slaying monsters, and above all, it let him show off his strength—his ‘power.’
“Heh heh heh...”
Tonight’s job was one of those, too.
A meeting was being held in Lyon, and a large number of nobles had gathered in the city.
Geese had been assigned to watch over what was essentially a secret club.
A playground for the sons of high-ranking nobles.
It really was an awful place.
One brat insisted that fine liquor was ‘cheap swill’ and demanded water. And as if that weren’t enough, he shamelessly had the beautiful maid sitting next to him feed him, going, “Aah.”
(What a bunch of stupid brats.)
Geese sneered at the pitiful brats who mistakenly thought they were special.
When the drunk idiot sons blustered, “We’re important!” all he could think was how utterly ignorant of the world they were.
(Sorry, but you’ve been set up. This is our turf...!!)
Geese struggled to hold back his laughter.
These pitiful prey...
These brats who had no idea they were surrounded by hunters.
“...Huh?”
As Geese was thinking that, he looked down the hallway.
Someone was approaching.
Squinting into the distance, he saw a brat with a maid following behind him.
If he remembered right—
(Wasn’t that the brat from House Randall, the ducal family?)
The one who appeared before him was the son of the ruler of this region, the Duke of Randall. He’d heard the duke and his wife were unusually conscientious for nobles, but their son was truly hopeless.
This was the brat who’d kept a maid at his side and called fine liquor cheap swill.
Among all the arrogant idiot sons, he was one of the most foolish-looking noble brats.
But Geese couldn’t help thinking, Again?
For some reason, this brat would occasionally come out into the hallway, and each time, Geese and the others had to warn him.
The patrol group secretly mocked this Duke of Randall’s brat as “a kid who can’t even go to the bathroom by himself.”
—However,
(What a pain. Did the sleeping drug not work?)
That’s right.
Geese and the others were already acting on their client’s orders.
It seemed Geese’s employer had devised an extraordinarily elaborate plan.
They’d drug the idiots making noise here, then move on to the next step. Apparently, they were planning to make a scene on the outskirts of Lyon next.
The nobles’ ball in the main building was probably in the same state.
What’s more, the employer apparently planned to expose these brats’ behavior to the public.
Indeed, nobles’ sons—who ought to be the first to act when trouble arose—frittering away their time partying was more than enough to incur the public’s wrath.
All he could do was laugh.
Depending on how this job went, he would earn an unimaginable sum.
And he couldn’t let a brat like this ruin such a perfect opportunity.
“Heh heh heh... Young master. What brings you out so late at night?”
He cracked his knuckles.
It was true that between nobles and adventurers, nobles held the higher position.
But that was in normal times.
In a situation like this, the strong were the ones who won.
That’s right. The plan was almost complete...!!
“That’s—”
And so, grinning, Geese lunged at the young master, as if to show off his strength.
“There’s no way I’m letting some boring, ordinary brat get in the way!!!!!”
A truly decisive strike.
He hadn’t let his guard down.
Geese’s fist should have struck the foolish young noble, and his foolish prey—who’d mistaken himself for someone special—should have twisted his face in terror.
—But Geese should have noticed.
That there wasn’t a shred of fear in the boy’s eyes.
Even though everyone around him was fast asleep—a bizarre situation—the boy was every bit as calm as usual.
“What?”
The boy muttered in exasperation.
“—Enrique. You haven’t finished cleaning up at all.”
Before Geese could even finish saying, “Huh...?!”
A hand reached out from the dimly lit area on the boy’s left.
That hand grabbed Geese by the face. Before he knew it, his body was completely suspended in the air.
“...What the—!!!”
He struggled desperately, but the hand wouldn’t let go.
The man’s hand was like iron. He couldn’t move at all.
What he felt through that hand was overwhelming strength. A hopeless difference in power.
He couldn’t believe it. He, of all people.
He didn’t mean to brag, but he’d made a decent living in the underworld.
He was a C-rank adventurer, too.
No matter who he was up against, there was no way he could be lifted so easily, completely at their mercy—
Wait.
A flash of insight streaked through Geese’s mind.
Just what was he up against?
What had he just said??????
The words that had just slipped from the languid boy’s lips—
(Enrique...?)
That was the name of a man he absolutely should never have gotten involved with.