Chapter 27

It looked like something built by giants. It was almost impossible to imagine human hands having made it. Even from a distance, its grandeur seemed to loom right before his eyes.

Not far from Torweil, a colossal gate stood in a deep gorge. Even its name was the Giants' Gate. No one knew who had built it, when, or why.

And that gate was the gateway to Fernland, the eastern expeditionary front. It stood unchanged from a hundred-odd years ago.

Ricard had ventured a short distance outside the city and gazed endlessly at the gate. The memories of those days, and the feelings they held. Fear, worry, unease, and resignation.

The gate was locked fast, as though sealing away some gigantic demon that would destroy the world.

"Man, this really feels nice. I can't stop touching it."

Volka spoke as he ran his hand over Ricard's fluffy blond hair. His skin had soon returned to normal, but his hair was still the same. It looked as though he would have to live with it for a while.

Ricard paid little attention to the playful hand. But when his lack of resistance prompted everyone else to have a feel, he waved his hands over his head as though shooing away flies.

Volka and the other students snickered, Molty smiled fondly, and Ice simply watched.

"What did old Alter say?"

Ricard turned to Volka as he asked. Alter was the head of the Beringen Adventurers' Guild's Torweil branch, as well as a Clan Master.

And, surprisingly, unlike the branch in Rheinfurt, which rented space in the thieves' guild building, Torweil had a proper branch building of its own. Though shouldn't that have been normal rather than surprising?

"Same old thing. Something about the higher-ups, and that we should wait for now."

Ricard and his party had only come to support a commission. The adventurers were the ones carrying it out; the students' role was to assist them.

But after what had happened on the way, the guild had to formulate a response of its own. Would they forget the commission and go to war, or let the matter end here? And if they were to end it, what terms would they need to agree upon?

They had already been here a week. In short, everything was on hold.

Of course, they had enjoyed the resulting unplanned holiday. Warm baths, fresh food, and refreshingly open, unfamiliar scenery.

"Hey! Over here!"

They turned at the call from behind them to find a guild member beckoning them over. The academy students scattered across the fields gathered together and approached him.

"Come to the branch. The branch head has something to tell you."

"What about? Are we finally going to carry out the commission?"

Volka asked, but the guild adventurer merely shrugged.

"How would I know? Some orders from above are public, and some are confidential."

Well, they would find out when they heard it for themselves, Ricard thought.

Ricard and his companions entered a slightly leaning cylindrical building inside the city, the sort of place a witch might live.

It was a cozy building with a single attic room upstairs, just right for an old woman living alone.

Scrolls were stuffed haphazardly into the bookshelves, and all manner of herbs hung drying from the ceiling. A faint fire burned silently in the hearth.

The man seated at the desk beckoned when he saw Ricard's party. This was Alter, the branch head, a man so fat it was hard to imagine how he had ever become an adventurer.

Ricard and the nine students approached him. Alter gazed at Ricard for a moment.

He was tall for his age, with fairly sturdy-looking limbs, but his face was unmistakably that of a little kid. And above all, those curls...

"No matter how often I look at you, I can't get used to it..."

"Used to what?"

"The fact that you killed Lorenz the Jackal."

"Wasn't he a little too stupid to be a jackal? He stirred up a hornet's nest for no reason."

He meant that Lorenz had antagonized the rangers of Griffinswald without gaining anything from it.

"Stupid, eh... He was famous for his cunning. Even we had trouble dealing with him. Anyway, our Master met with theirs for talks. Apparently, the Rubens Guild demanded that someone of Clan Master rank on our side die in return."

By simply 'Master,' he meant the Guild Master.

"That's absurd."

"Yes, it is. Naturally, that was rejected. Next, they demanded we hand over the person who killed Lorenz."

Ricard was the one who had killed Lorenz. The students behind him wore looks of disbelief. Surely they hadn't...

"And?"

"Apparently, right then and there, the Master ordered that this be given to you."

Alter took a gold cloak pin from a drawer and held it out. It depicted laurels symbolizing the Emperor and an eagle holding a snake in its beak, the symbol of Beringen.

"What's this?"

"The insignia of an upper-grade adventurer. I'm too embarrassed to wear mine, though. Don't sell it. Oh, and this doesn't make you an official adventurer yet. Not until you've graduated and served out your contract. Anyway, it's yours for now."

He was not an adventurer yet, but they would effectively treat him as an upper-grade one. After all, he might still give up on becoming an adventurer along the way.

"And these are for the rest of you."

Alter took silver cloak pins from the drawer and spread them across the desk. These too bore laurels and an eagle, but the eagle held no snake in its beak. They were the insignia of the middle grade.

It was an extraordinary promotion. They had yet to so much as see a deserter. And it was also an act of defiance carried out in full view of the rival guild.

Though those had not been his actual words, it amounted to declaring to their faces, "Hand over the kid who killed Lorenz? Fuck you. That's never happening."

Ricard gazed at the gold pin in his hand, then asked,

"Does that mean war?"

Alter shook his head.

"Full-scale wars rarely happen. There's the usual minor bloodshed here and there, of course. They deliberately stirred things up this time, but they couldn't have expected to lose a Clan Master to academy students. So, in the end, we've reached an agreement for now: we'll return the prisoners without ransom. They took heavy losses too, so we didn't insist on getting that as well."

In other words, the negotiations had turned out reasonably well for their side. For the time being, they would not have to worry about attacks from Rubens while carrying out their commission.

Of course, those bastards might lose their minds and ignore the agreement. But that would give other guilds grounds to attack them for violating it, so Ricard's party was unlikely to be ambushed again, barring exceptional circumstances.

"I'd meant to tear that bastard Lorenz apart myself one day, but getting his head cut off and his body burned isn't bad either. Heh heh heh. And honestly, it felt fucking great. To me, anyway. The people at the other branches probably feel the same. But that means you need to be all the more careful. The Rubens lot will be itching for payback. So wear a hood. Cover up that golden broccoli on your head."

"I didn't do this to my hair on purpose."

Ricard touched his tightly curled hair as he spoke.

"Yes, yes, anyway. It's time you lot got to work, isn't it? I'd have liked to give you a few more days off, but time is everything when you're chasing fugitives. Divide yourselves into three teams. Then go with the people I assign you."

Ricard and the other students looked at one another. It was time to split up. Something like regret seemed to pass between them.

"Can't we do it on our own?" Volka asked.

"Don't get cocky. Fighting and doing a job are two different things. No more back talk. Go watch and learn. Here's your advance. Students don't normally get one, but I'm giving you one because I like you little brats. I've taken it out of my own pay for now. Got that?"

The potbellied branch head tossed money pouches onto the desk as he spoke. Volka promptly snatched them up.

"You'll see each other again when the job's done and you're back at the academy anyway. If things get dangerous, use my people as shields. Don't die. Off you go. Wait at the inn."

Alter waved them away. He seemed embarrassed by what he had said. A smile crept onto Ricard's face. What an endearing old fellow.

Ricard and the students left the witchlike house and looked at one another again.

"Are we splitting back into our old groups?"

One of the girls spoke. No one readily agreed, and Molty offered a suggestion.

"How about mixing things up?"

"What?"

"Let's mix up the groups. Don't want to?"

He meant forming three new teams with different members rather than returning to their original three groups.

"Well, I'm fine with that..."

Volka sounded noncommittal. Surprisingly, however, Ice was the first to step forward.

"I want Riki."

Everyone stared at him, wide-eyed.

"What? You said to mix things up. I want Riki."

"All right. Then I want Lara."

Molty, who had first proposed the idea, picked one of the girls as though he had been waiting for this. Lara's eyes widened. Then, for no apparent reason, she lowered her head a little and let her gaze dart about.

As Ricard wondered what was going on, Volka hurriedly picked the remaining girl.

"I want Delphi."

"What? Don't we get a say in this?"

Unlike Lara, the girl named Delphi frowned.

"No."

It was Ice who answered flatly. Who made him the boss?

At any rate, those who wanted to choose did so, and the remaining students divided themselves among the groups to form three teams of three. With nine of them, the numbers worked out perfectly.

Ricard parted ways with his original companions, Volka and Molty, and teamed up with Ice and the boy who had traveled with the girls. The boy's name was Fallen.

Fallen looked somewhat intimidated, and with good reason: his new companions were Ice and Ricard. He felt trapped between two monsters. They were ranked first and second, after all.

Neither Ricard nor Ice gave it a thought, but Fallen fidgeted on his own before making an awkward attempt at conversation.

"Must be nice, being able to take your pick of girls."

Ricard and Ice turned toward him. They stared at his face without saying a word. Fallen wondered if he had done something wrong and was on the verge of breaking into a cold sweat.

In truth, neither of them knew how to respond.

As they waited inside the inn, the Beringen Academy students chattered away. They seemed at ease. Their fear of new things and the unknown appeared to have diminished somewhat.

They joked with one another and laughed, throwing their heads back in hearty laughter. Things that would once have provoked a sharp response, they now knew how to laugh off.

After enduring great hardship, people realized that the things they had once been so sensitive about were, in fact, nothing much at all.

Trials and adversity could sometimes leave people discouraged and in despair, but overcoming them made a person stronger and more resilient.

People called that growth, and perhaps the students had taken a step closer to adulthood.

Sword fights, blood, battle, and the deaths of comrades might surround their lives, but that did not mean they had to be miserable all the time, or surrender to any of it.

Ricard liked this feeling. Watching these boys and girls grow. What about himself, then? The question lingered, but he felt that it hardly mattered.

He did not know whether the war a hundred-odd years ago had been necessary, but things like this were truly good to see. There had been no academies back then.

For a moment, he wondered what it would have been like if there had been one. If, even without a family, he had had friends like these.

Still, in the end, he was the one who had guided them another step forward. That filled him with tremendous pride. Enough to make him feel it had been worth risking his life.