WE ENTERED THE ADVENTURERS’ MEET WITH MY STEPDAUGHTER
And so we headed for the skills-review tournament reception at the entrance to the grove.
There was a whole crowd of adventurers there, like when the population density of a more rural town drastically increases for an event.
“I believe I have told you already, but I will give you a quick review—the time limit for this tournament is three days. The party who has the most to show for their efforts in that time period is the winner. Ranking well means prize money and better ranks as an adventurer.”
Oh right, adventurers had an actual rank system besides the number rankings they got in their popularity contests. Things like B and C ranks…
“What’s your adventurer rank, Wynona?”
“S rank.”
Her answer came quickly.
“Uh, that’s gotta be the top rank, right? You really are a big deal…”
“No, all adventurers who get their names in This Adventurer Is Amazing! are S rank, so the letters don’t mean much at all. This fight is about how high up one can go within the S ranking.”
Sounds like an action manga with too much power creep…
“By the way, Miss Wynona, how do we win?” Laika asked a most reasonable question.
The parties weren’t fighting against one another, so it was hard to tell how we would be graded.
“How many powerful monsters we defeat, how many magic stones we gather from those monsters, how many unusual items we collect, discovering and exploring yet-to-be-discovered caves, etcetera.”
That sounded sensible to me.
“And…relationships with fellow adventurers and guilds can influence your grade.”
Wynona glanced up—ahead of her was a crowd of people gathering around a party of female adventurers.
“Please look this way!”
“Pose with your sword!”
“Give me your game face!”
“You’re all cute; you’re all super cute!”
“Thank you so much; thank you so much!”
I knew that all the lady adventurers were good-looking and popular because of it, but there was something different about how people were fawning over them.
“Oh no, that is not what I want to experience…” Laika seemed already fed up with this whole thing.
Me too, Laika…
“Some female adventurers make a living off their popularity.” Wynona looked tired. “And they are still S-rank adventurers. They can slice a large wyrm to bits in ten seconds. One of them placed seventh in the newcomer division.”
“They sure sound powerful, even if they don’t look it!”
“That is why S rank is a given. One cannot make their way up as an adventurer without garnering more popularity or showing off overwhelming skill.”
“Man, being an adventurer is no picnic…” Much harsher than I thought it was. But every industry had an endless climb to the top and plenty of tough battles.
Then, somebody slid into view right in front of us—a thief, if my guess was correct.
Not a literal thief; I don’t mean they’re actually conducting robberies (usually). It’s just an adventurer job, a specialist in undoing locks and disarming traps in dungeons. If adventurer thieves were actually stealing from people, then we’d have to turn around and put out arrest warrants for the criminals…
“Excuse me, you’re Wynona, right?!”
“Yes? I will be participating today with these two,” Wynona replied calmly, as though all was normal.
All of a sudden, people started coming out of the woodwork!
“Good luck, Wynnie!”
“We’re rooting for you!”
“I’m in love with you! Really! Please marry me!”
“I’ll stan you forever!”
“You’ll be in the hall of fame in no time!”
“Can you pose like you’re casting a spell?”
Oh god… This is so many people…
The one asking for Wynona’s hand in marriage was a woman, by the way.
I guess you needed to be super popular to take first place in the newcomer division.
“The rest of Wynona’s party, please look this way!”
“Strike a pose!”
Oh no, they’re looking at us, too…
“Lady Azusa…rd, I don’t know if I can handle this…”
Her face bright red, Laika hid behind me. That was par for the course for her.
“Oh, she’s one of those shy types.”
“I like it, though!”
“Yeah, just be yourself!”
“We don’t mind a shy girl!”
Okay, I’m gonna cut to the chase: Shut up!
Meanwhile, there were some people sketching us with unbelievable vigor… They were skilled enough to put food on the table; they didn’t need to be adventurers at all…
“That dragon-girl looks super cool, too!”
“She has close ties with the dragons?”
“She looks so dignified.”
“Please look this way!”
They were concentrating on me, now. Our whole party was getting scrutinized.
“I mean, as long as it’s not a blue dragon.”
“Blue dragons traumatized me…”
“One bit me once…”
Blue dragons had a terrible reputation wherever you went!
“Are you two dragons sisters or something?”
“Yeah, you seem really close.”
“Yes! I-I’m the younger one!” Laika replied, her voice high-pitched and excited.
I guess I did look like the older one when we stood next to each other.
After that, Laika and I got so many questions it was kind of hard to keep up with.
“The adventurers Wynona picks must be powerful! I hope you don’t mind us watching your careers from now on!” someone also said. We were like newcomers to an idol group.
But Wynona remained firm and said, “We have yet to finish preparations. Would you mind leaving us be?” And everyone obediently scattered.
Everyone had good manners when it came to that stuff. Maybe there was an unwritten rule like Bothering the idols doesn’t make you a real fan.
“The adventuring industry sure has changed… I think it was more normal three hundred years ago…”
“Perhaps. The adventuring industry has been groping around for a defined form for a long time, and I believe this is what they’ve settled on. The industry cannot grow if they are known only as those shady individuals grumbling in taverns.”
I guess the popularity of the female adventurers also helps with the industry’s grungy image…
Still, I thought it was extreme.
“Please do not worry; we will not be receiving any more adulation of that nature. We will simply be clearing the grove as adventurers.”
“That’s a relief… I feel like we’ll be able to get good work in, if that’s the case.”
Laika and I would draw way too much attention if either of us did our absolute best, after all, and that wouldn’t be good.
Wynona had really only asked us to join so that we’d fill out her numbers anyway. She never said anything about putting us to work. Wynona herself was a fine adventurer in her own right, so that was obvious.
The staff came around to announce that we’d be starting in five minutes. It was almost time.
Wynona turned to look at me and Laika. “Finally, I have one word of warning for the both of you. In this tournament, adventurers are not expected to fight among one another. If you do, it is not subject to evaluation.”
Adventurer-hunting wasn’t allowed, basically.
“However—if things do come to blows, then dealing injuries is allowed, and no more. It is possible that a party or two out there is looking to pick fights. Be careful.”
“Oh, sure. I doubt that’ll be a problem.”
I wasn’t planning on starting any fights myself, and whether we got involved basically came down to random chance. But if anyone came after us, I would put them in their place.
“And one other thing—our objective during this tournament.”
“Yeah, we haven’t heard anything about that yet.”
What were we supposed to do, specifically, during this whole thing? Well, as long as we stuck with Wynona, we’d be okay. We were just acting anyway.
“We will capture the unique elephant that is said to live somewhere in the grove. That is our greatest objective.”
“An elephant? Is that some kind of rare item?”
“It is called the chalk elephant—a beautiful, pure-white creature.”
My head fell in disappointment. “You just want to keep it as a pet for the color!”
“I am glad you understand, Stepmother. I wish to bring it home to my mansion,” she declared calmly. Wynona kept a lot of white animals in her mansion, and she apparently wanted more.
“All this for a new pet…”
“No, we will receive high marks if we can show the chalk elephant to the staff. That is why it will not be a problem.”
“Aren’t you lucky your hobbies and practical uses overlap?”
“Please let me know if you see any other white creatures. I will catch them.”
It really just sounded like she wanted more animals for her collection…
Then—the loud drum signaling the start of the tournament echoed throughout the entrance to the grove.
Adventurers poured into the sea of trees, but Wynona did not move right away.
She was the professional adventurer and our leader, so Laika and I waited, too.
“I see our strategy is to stand and wait at first to watch things play out,” Laika said, impressed.
“Rushing forward will only dirty our clothes.”
“So you do worry about dirt on your clothes!!”
“Dirty clothes implies a dirty heart. Refusing to wash can be a symbol of one’s contempt for others. If an acquaintance of yours shows up to your meeting spot wearing soiled clothes, do you not feel insulted?”
“You sound like the headmistress of a super-strict school…”
But Wynona started casting something. “O wondrous white, keen white, piercing white, selfless white!”
That was also an incantation I wasn’t familiar with. Didn’t she just make it up, though?
A film of faint light seemed to envelop our party. “There. Now dirt and mud shall not get on us. Let us be off.”
“You sure have a lot of useful spells…”
“I learned it from the wizard slime, Wizly. She is said to be the first of her kind.”
“Ah, so Wizly was your mentor?”
I didn’t think there were any magic-using slimes out there besides Wizly. But if we counted spirits, then that would make Wynona the second.
“I came up with the incantation. Just so you know.”
“I knew it! There was too much about the color white!”
“There will be plenty of weaker monsters out there, but there is no real meaning in engaging with them. At most, we should dispatch them if they block our way.”
“’Kay, got it, got it.”
We pushed our way into the grove with Wynona leading the way.
I say push, but thanks to that thin film of light, we didn’t get tired or feel any resistance from the grasses or the branches. It went really smoothly, actually.
“Hey, do you think you could teach this spell to your stepmom next time?”
There were some days I didn’t want to encounter any slimes, so it might be a handy thing to have those times when I went out.
“I don’t mind, but it could be hard for a non-slime to learn.”
Was it weird to learn a slime-repellant spell from a slime spirit…?
“I’m thinking of this as special training on a real battlefield! I am bracing myself, but I am eager to show off the fruits of my daily training!” Laika was super enthusiastic about this.
I’ve got a feeling I’m the least excited out of all of us…
We concentrated on our survey of the grove, while Wynona drew a map of the areas that hadn’t been recorded before.
Mapmaking was part of an adventurer’s job, work that slowly expanded our knowledge of a world. There were still many places where no person had ever set foot.
In terms of battle, monsters did attack us, but Laika and I squared them away with a single hit. Or Wynona froze them with her magic.
No one was getting in our way, and while it was a little unclear whether we were actually bonding or not, we still made a fantastic party.
“Yep, I think I get now why being an adventurer is more like a sport or the idol industry,” I murmured, several hours into our expedition. “Dungeons that don’t have any bosses to defeat or items to obtain are more boring than I thought…”
The core of our job was to make a map, which was one part of an adventurer’s work that gave their labor meaning in the real world. Just delving into long-abandoned ruins and getting items didn’t really benefit society.
Which meant that all we could really do now was patiently keep on walking. Kind of an empty job for an adventurer, hence all the promo and fanfare…
Wynona must have agreed because she nodded.
“Here in the grove, this is not exactly easy. Weak parties would have to immediately retreat from any encounters. But for S-rank adventurers, this is essentially nothing more than a walk around the block.”
A world without bosses was really hard for adventurers.
Just like she said, the farther we went in, the more parties we encountered who had been injured or forced to quit.
“Ooh! I hurt my bad knee, again…”
“I threw out my arm throwing too many rocks!”
“I can’t believe my chronic back pain is flaring up now!”
Wait, if you’re old enough to have chronic back pain, then maybe you should switch careers?!
“It sure sounds like a lot of them quit without ever coming across a monster,” I remarked once we passed the adventurer with the back pain.
“Indeed. Conditioning is crucial in order to work as an adventurer for a long time. Quite a handful of promising adventurers suffer injuries.”
“It really is a lot like sports…”
“That adventurer we just passed with an arm injury is also somewhat well-known. He threw one hundred and fifty stones a day over five straight days.”
Isn’t that about the number of pitches a high school baseball player could throw…?
“The adventuring world is full of hardships, isn’t it, Lady Azusa?”
She didn’t use my fake name, but fortunately there weren’t any other adventurers around us to hear.
“Yeah, there are way more things you need to think about than I thought. I was expecting more people just doing their own things. Like hanging out in taverns and getting drunk as soon as the sun set.”
Maybe it was just a preconception of mine, but my image of adventuring was a tavern near the guild where everyone was ready to brawl at the drop of a hat.
“That’s the older image, from back when adventurers were required for all different kinds of situations.”
We weren’t so much actively clearing the grove but more listening to Wynona’s explanations and learning as we moved around.
“As functional divides grew and specialists appeared, the regular people could no longer rely on adventurers who acted as jacks-of-all-trades. In the past, people had no choice but to gather adventurers when a horde of monsters attacked their towns, but now they can detect these things ahead of time, gather their armies, and prevent it from happening.”
“I guess that’s more trustworthy than a gang of unfamiliar adventurers all lumped together, huh.”
It’d be checkmate for the town if they relied on adventurers who never showed up…
“In addition, one of the main requests adventurers received was to find missing persons, but now larger cities have specialized investigators for that sort of thing.”
So the division of labor in society had permanently changed the amorphous title of adventurer.
The sun was starting to set, so we decided to set up camp around a large hollowed-out tree. We caught some grove rabbits, fried them, and ate them. Pretty tasty.
Wynona, meanwhile, had brought her own pillow and blanket. She sure was particular when it came to some things…
Laika and I piled up some large leaves to wrap ourselves in and use as blankets. We were in the south, so it wasn’t all that cold.
Wynona also wiped the leaves clean with a damp cloth. She wanted to keep any hazards that would dirty our clothes at a minimum.
At this point, she was basically a strict, fastidious mother… Our roles had been reversed…
Laika quickly fell asleep. She wasn’t exactly the type to get tired on a journey; it was more like she had worn herself out spending all this time in a new environment.
Laika was powerful, but she didn’t have that brash mindset that often came with it. On the other hand, I don’t think I’d be able to handle it if she was like Flatorte, so I’d rather she stayed the way she was.
“Hey, Wynona, are you up?” I asked Wynona, who lay beside me in a proper white blanket.
“Yes, Stepmother. I am awake.” She was lying squarely on her back, so I couldn’t see her face.
“Why did you become an adventurer?” I asked directly.
Adventurers nowadays needed a lot of self-discipline in order to get anywhere. If you just tried to jump in because you couldn’t handle a job with more structure, you wouldn’t be able to survive.
Why did Wynona choose to be an adventurer?
All I could hear was an exasperated sigh.
Haughty was her default mode…
“Because adventurers can live life alone.”
I didn’t hear any grief in her voice, but it sounded a little sad to me.
“When I was born, the only person I could communicate with was the Great Slime. Without any assets, history, or anything else, the easiest path for me to take and find a life within the culture was to establish myself as an adventurer.”
Even if I wasn’t the reason she came to life in this world, she still had to take care of everything on her own.
I thought that was way easier than being a corporate wage slave, but some people might be at a loss as to what to do.
“Just as I told you today, it is not easy becoming a top-rate adventurer. However, once you attain that status, you can live in beautiful abodes like my mansion. Success can earn you a lot of money.”
“You don’t need to mention that; it kinda kills the magic.”
“Don’t you want to hear about my salary?”
“Nope.”
Well, one thing hasn’t changed about being an adventurer—you can come from nothing and be hugely successful.
“And it goes without saying that the work itself is fun,” Wynona said, her voice clear. “Though one must battle constantly with oneself, I much prefer it to having someone decide everything for me.”
“Yeah, I totally agree.”
I kept letting other people choose for me, and before I knew it, I was being forced to do something that was essentially slave labor, and then all that work killed me…
But there was something I had to make sure was said.
“Wynona, you’re not alone—”
“Ah, no cheese for me, thank you.”
She knew exactly what I was going to say! Yikes, that reply was really embarrassing…
“In the end, humans and spirits are alone. Not even slimes can absorb other slimes and become the all-slime or anything.”
But I actually experienced that thanks to Godly Godness… Although that was like a game world… It wasn’t reality…
“I expect great things from you again tomorrow, Stepmother.”
“Yeah, I got this.”
I could tell that Wynona was starting to open up to me, so all in all, it was a good day.
“Oh, by the way, who’s taking care of all the white pets you have at home?”
Adventurers often left their homes unoccupied for a long time.
“Grand Duke Polar Bear is taking care of them, so they’re all right.”
“Your polar bear is?!”
Bears were pretty smart, sure. But—
“If your polar bear’s a grand duke, doesn’t that make it of higher standing than you, a margrave?”
A duke was clearly above any kind of count or countess! But I guess people named their pets King and all that, so maybe it didn’t matter.
“The Grand Duke is white all over, unlike me, so of course he’s of higher standing.”
“You really stick to your guns, don’t you…?”
I bet her pets were very happy with her.
“Grand Duke Polar Bear knows his position comes with the duty to protect my other pets, so he concentrates on his job.”
I could imagine Grand Duke Polar Bear working hard at his job, and the mental image was kind of funny.
On day two, we continued our exploration.
My role was to gather samples of rare plants. Some could be useful for medicine, after all.
Since all the adventurers went into the grove at once, we did come across some other parties, but the frequency of it was clearly lessening.
“It seems more and more adventuring groups have quit. Or perhaps we have gone in quite deep.”
“Probably both, Laika. I doubt lower-level parties can go in this deep.”
We were so strong that we were kind of numb to it all, but the monsters and other creatures in the grove were powerful. Fierce lizards, snakes, and weirdly big bugs… A lot, basically.
To be honest, I considered packing up and going home when I saw a stink bug the size of a soccer ball, but Wynona froze and killed it.
“Do you see how the shell on this insect glitters? It sells for quite a high price for craft uses—tens of thousands of gold.”
“Huh, no kidding… I don’t really want to touch it, though…”
We discovered plants and animals that looked like they might be new species, created maps of unexplored areas, and managed to be productive overall.
Wynona was the one who tried to identify them and see if any of these things were new species.
“So you know enough to tell, huh. I’m a witch, so I can suss out a thing or two, but I have no way to tell if it’s a new species or not.”
“Every S-ranked adventurer knows these things, of course. People will even treat you poorly if you don’t.”
“This industry really is rough… You’re all practically researchers…”
If a person wanted to be an adventurer for a long time, they had to contribute meaningfully to society while also gaining popularity.
I bet it was easy to make a ton of money by that point, but maybe only one in a hundred—one in a thousand—actually made it that far.
Wynona didn’t strike me as an adventurer when I first met her, but now I could tell she was perfectly suited to this field in the modern age.
Laika, being Laika, squared away large basilisks with a single punch, showing off her full strength without remorse.
“I’m moving much better today. It is far easier to strike certain points while in human form. I think I will be able to improve if I can make the best use of my human and dragon forms when they’re most appropriate.”
“You don’t truly need to get any stronger, do you? You would be able to feed yourself for the rest of your life as an adventurer.”
Wynona was astonished at how powerful Laika was. I bet Laika could easily be ranked S, too.
That night for dinner, Wynona found a fruit that had pure-white pulp inside when you peeled it.
“It is not poisonous, so no need to worry.”
“I’m impressed with how well you can manage even when you’re obsessed with the color white…”
And then, day three.
Our yield wasn’t bad at all, so we decided to head back to the grove entrance where reception was.
An amateur like me had no idea what our grade would be, but Wynona’s expression told me that we easily had enough to pass.
“Thank you so much, both of you. I may be able to get first place in the general rankings of This Adventurer Is Amazing! next year thanks to you.”
“That’d make you the most powerful adventurer, then, huh? That’s pretty cool.”
It wasn’t easy to make it that far without the right stuff.
“Ah, I am not sure if I’ll be the most powerful. Without the right factors that gain others’ votes, then one cannot reach first place. Power alone is not enough.”
“All that stuff’s too confusing!”
I guess if they were ranking people based on pure strength, then they could just hold a traditional tournament or something.
“If there is one thing I find regrettable, it is that we were unable to find the chalk elephant, I suppose.”
“Hey, you’re right. We didn’t see the elephant at all.”
I’d thought that we’d at least catch a glimpse of something as big as an elephant as we wandered the grove for three whole days, but nothing.
“We did not even see any crushed plants, so it might be by the water’s edge,” Laika said. As a large creature herself, she knew her stuff.
Wynona appeared to be thinking for a while before she finally said, “Then before we leave, let us do that. We can follow the river out of the grove, I believe.”
And so the three of us took a bit of a detour on our way out—and it was a big success.
The second we came out by the river, we discovered exactly what we were looking for.
The elephant was drinking!
“Wynona, there it is!”
“There is no room for doubt! This is the chalk elephant!”
Wynona was the most excited she’d been these three days. She approached the elephant and gazed up at it. The poor thing seemed a little annoyed.
The chalk elephant was a bit smaller than the elephants I’d seen at the zoo. Maybe it evolved that way to have an easier time among all the trees.
Wynona started taking notes on the elephant’s mode of life. I guess observing animals was part of her job, too, and she was doing her due diligence. But I assumed that once she was done taking notes, she was probably going to try and pull it out of here.
I was wrong.
“Chalk elephant, do you have a family?” she asked, although I doubted it could understand speech.
I could feel my heart clench.
She wasn’t seizing everything she saw that was white and taking it home. She wasn’t going to drag a creature away from its own home and family. At least, that’s how I took it.
Or maybe Wynona wasn’t conscious of it, since she lived alone.
The elephant’s trunk curled into the form of a question mark.
They were communicating, somehow!
“I see you don’t quite understand my words. Shall I look around for other elephant tracks, then?”
Then, we heard the clinking sound of metal scraping against metal—a sure sign of human presence.
Before us appeared a group of three, all wearing black armor.
“You are the Black Knights!”
Wynona yelled.
So these were the Black Knights, the first-place newcomer party. Wynona wasn’t kidding when she said they were in all black. Their faces were even hidden behind their helms; I almost mistook them for living-armor demons or something…
“Ah, what a coincidence to come across you here, Wynona. Perfect timing,” one of the masked people murmured. I could tell from the tension between them that this wasn’t a friendly encounter. “I would like to offer my thanks for making a fool of us when you turned down my proposal.”
Whoa, hey, that sounds like fightin’ words!
“Stepmother, Laika, even if it does not happen in public, adventurers do attack one another behind the scenes. I have been targeted a handful of times in the past.”
Even as the adventuring world got more and more institutionalized, some of the dirty parts stuck around.
“I will never forget the hatred I felt for you when you turned down our invitation to join the Black Knights. Such contempt! ‘Ugh,’ you said, ‘if I were to be forced together with you disgusting individuals who embrace such a color, I would much rather work with brown cockroaches. The color of your armor is already enough of a joke; do not involve me. Do not enter within a thirty-gilro radius of me. If you do, I will notify the police. Why not jump into a swamp of sulfuric acid and bleach yourselves? Go on, then, leave.’ I remember every single word you said to me!”
I wouldn’t blame them for attacking her!
“Wynona!! You’re awful! That’s a terrible thing to say to someone!”
“Such an excellent memory would be better suited to memorizing the scripture of your deity of choice. Though I am certain any deity worshipped by you aesthetically challenged fools must be similarly horrifying. Oh, I feel as though my clothes will darken if I continue talking to you, so please step away from me.”
And she was going for the fight, too!
“Lady Azusa, I see adventurers remain as hot-blooded as they have always been.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right… And, Laika, remember to call me Azusard here.”
Luckily, the Black Knights were only interested in Wynona, so they weren’t listening to us. The other two stepped forward, flanking the one who had spoken.
“I will not allow this girl to treat us this way. What sort of education did her parents give her?!” The voice sounded like an older woman.
None, actually.
“I’ve known your pitch-black armor was ugly from the moment I was born. From before I was born.”
I guess de-escalation wasn’t Wynona’s style.
This time, the last of the Black Knights removed his helm and stepped forward. “I will not stand for this anymore!” It was a middle-aged man.
The second adventurer removed her helm, too, and just as her voice implied, she was a middle-aged woman.
The Black Knight who first spoke to Wynona then removed his helm. It was a young man of about twenty years old, who looked similar to the older man next to him. Wait, did that mean…?
“The Jozit family will not remain silent after such mockery! As the father, I will take on this fight!”
So they were a family! They were adventuring together!
“Ah, I remember Jozit. He was an adventurer who married another adventurer twenty years ago. His results began to drop, and he subsequently retired. I see you are hiding your face and giving it another shot as a newcomer.”
“Precisely. I cannot win against the young adventurers, and there are relatively few enemies in the newcomer party division, so I hoped an odd duck with his face covered could get into the top ranks.”
He sure was strategic for the most trivial stuff!
“I also chose this color to establish my character.”
“And the dirt doesn’t stand out, so cleaning it is easy,” his wife added. Rational decisions all around.
“So you have no sense of beauty. Fashion is not simply something you wear for its convenience or the attention of others. You must dress to display your convictions! You owe the god of fashion an apology!”
“What? There’s a god of fashion? But we weren’t even talking about fashion in the first place!” I exclaimed.
We’re all adventurers here; don’t get that mixed up.
“Ultimately, fashion is only temporary,” said the wife. “When you’re young, you can dress for acclaim as you go on your exploits, but as you get older, you eventually settle on the safer options. When you reach my age, you just look pitiful in what you used to wear as an adventurer.”
What a strange thing to get hung up on…
“As for me,” said the husband, “I like to lie around the house naked once I’m out of the bath! I gave up on fashion years ago!”
Too much information, dude!
“I am always telling you to put on some clothes after your bath,” said the wife. “At least take some inches off your tummy first.”
Yeah, I don’t think that’ll happen…
“What’s more important than fashion is love—familial love! We work hard now for our son. We do wish he chose a more stable profession, but since we were both adventurers in the past, we couldn’t say no.”
“That’s why we decided to form a party and fight together—we want our son to grow up to be a respectable adventurer in his own right!”
They were a bunch of weirdos, but there was nothing wrong with a family like this…
“That’s right. With my mom and dad, I’m gonna shoot for the stars! We’ll get top ten of the general rankings!”
“That’s not the stars!” I interjected before I could stop myself. “At least try to aim for top three!”
“Miss dragon, we’re a bit of an oddity—getting top ten in the general rankings is amazing enough as it is. Noteworthy, even.”
Oh right, I’m wearing my horn headband. Phew, at least no one’s figured out I’m not really a dragon.
“The point is! I will never forget such humiliation. I will defeat you all and take away everything you’ve accomplished here in the grove!”
“Yeah! I’ll fight for our son!”
“I will, too! I’ll give this another go… I’ll even try dieting again!”
Honestly, please stop giving me info I didn’t want to hear!
“Sigh…”
Wynona’s sigh was full of contempt.
“Very well. I will crush you. After I’m done with you, just seeing the color white will leave you trembling in terror.”
So you’re going to completely destroy their lives, then.
“We will win this battle!”
The young adventurer was probably pretty strong, but I wondered where all this confidence was coming from.
“When we work as a family, our strength is complete. But you, Wynona—you have no family, and you live alone. That’s what makes us different!”
I honestly wondered what kind of logic that was, but—there was a look of displeasure on Wynona’s face. She had a lot of displeased expressions, but this one was different. It was almost like he hit a nerve.
“Is there a problem with not having a family?”
She had her hands balled into fists—she was angry.
Wynona wasn’t really interested in having a parent-child bond with anyone. She’d usually say, “I would much rather have money than anything like that.”
But of course, she wasn’t happy to hear someone say out loud to her that she had no family. She’d never had a family. She was a slime spirit—she popped into existence somewhere in the Great Slime’s forest.
The Black Knight family wouldn’t know about that, though, and they probably didn’t mean any harm, but Wynona was definitely irritated by the subject.
“Margrave Wynona of Idell, I know your rotten personality has estranged you from your parents and brothers and sisters. Plenty of quirky people end up as adventurers, but none of them are as warped as you!” the young knight continued.
He was kind of right, at least in terms of her rotten personality… No, wait, I shouldn’t be happy about this…
“And we will not fight like you! We will strike back with our family’s perfect formations! Formation five!”
The Black Knights then stepped deftly into place, surrounding Wynona.
“Behold, a family’s economical movements! Prepare yourself, Wynona!”
“Oh—honey, that’s your spot for formation seven.”
“Crap. I got them backward!”
Maybe they had economical movements, but there was no point if they didn’t remember them correctly!
But they’d definitely knocked Wynona off her game.
A mage would have to immediately start casting, but she now had the enemy both in front of her and behind her. If she had a spell ready to knock them all back, she could turn this around—but she didn’t, and she couldn’t.
“What? You may attack me as a family, but you are still not my enemy!”
“Fine, but can you block us from all directions?” asked Knight Dad. He and his wife were fairly experienced adventurers.
“You have met your match, Wynona, and you will soon see it!”
The Black Knights all moved to attack Wynona at once.
“She has a mother!”
I immediately went to stand in front of Wynona.
“I am Wynona’s mother, Azusard, the adventurer! Ready for battle!”
The Black Knights froze. “You—When did you…get there…?” Knight Mom was stunned.
Oh-ho-ho, wait till you see my stats, lady.
“You’re her mother? But you’re so young…? Maybe it’s a complicated situation…?”
Knight Dad was more surprised by a less relevant detail…
I glanced back at Wynona and smiled. “I’ll go for the parents; you go for the kid. So everyone’s picking on someone their own size.”
“…A-all right, Mother…step.”
I was delighted when she forgot to add the step part, but she tacked it on at the end anyway.
“All right, here we go!”
I got up close to Knight Dad and pulverized his armor as easily as I would a piece of paper. I just grabbed the neck part and yanked. It was the first time in almost three hundred and twenty years that I’d been reminded of that craft project I made entirely out of aluminum cans. In my past life, I guess it’d be a little weird thinking about the years, though.
I’d kill somebody if I attacked with all my might, so…I had to be careful…
“Bwuh?! What superhuman strength… No, is this an illusion…?”
Unfortunately, this was reality. I could use magic, but physical attacks were a lot easier.
“May as well keep you from attacking while I’m at it, huh?” I twisted Knight Dad’s sword. “Weapons are dangerous, so you’re not allowed to use them anymore.”
I dashed toward Knight Mom next and bent the tip of her sword straight down. The better you are with the sword, the worse it is not to have one.
I then indented her armor a little bit with a double-handed push.
“Ah! My waist barely fits in this, and now it’s pinching! Owww!”
Wasn’t expecting emotional damage from this fight! I guess that was good enough to keep stepmom out of this in the meanwhile.
How was Wynona doing?
The young knight, his sword drawn, was headed straight for Wynona.
Yes, this was the right strategy. No point in making him panic.
“Prepare yourself, Wynona!”
“Prepare myself? No thank you,” Wynona said as she deftly danced out of Knight Boy’s rushing path.
She was still so cold and unwelcoming, even at times like this. But if you think of it another way, it meant she was levelheaded again.
Now that the fight was one-on-one, the two were on totally different levels. She easily warded off all his attacks. Eventually, she began an incantation.
“No fiercer violence than the pure first snow! No act more terrifying than wanton destruction!”
Once she was finished, a magic circle appeared in the air right in front of her.
What came pouring out was a furious, pure-white blizzard!
“Aaaaargh!”
As he ran forward, Knight Boy took the blizzard head-on and stopped in his tracks.
“Hee-hee, how dingy you are. I shall make you like new-fallen snow.” She smirked. Still all about the white…
The middle-aged knights had already lost the will to battle, holding their hands up in surrender.
I’d call that a win.
“Incredible, Lady Azusa! Every movement was flawless!”
I gave up on trying to make Laika call me by my fake name… But—
“Yes, behold the power of Azusard the dragon! Azusard can crumple both armor and swords!”
—I was still going to insist on the name Azusard!
The Black Knights left us all the rare herbs that they collected as an apology and ran off.
I guess that settled that matter.
“I apologize for troubling you like this.” Wynona awkwardly bowed her head to me. “They were no match for us, but I lost focus when we began arguing, which delayed my spell. I must defeat those types one by one as they come to me…”
“Oh, you can just say thanks. I’m still your mom, even if it comes with an extra ‘step.’” I ruffled her hair.
“Please do not play with my hair!” she complained, which was more or less what I was expecting.
“Well, even if we don’t live in the same house, you can still consider us your family. You aren’t alone.”
“I already have a family. You know, Grand Duke Polar Bear.”
“Of course, your pets are very special members of your family!”
That was a good point; her house was certainly lively, so maybe she wasn’t as lonely as I thought…
“But it is still true that you took care of me. Thank you, S…Mother.”
She looked away, but she didn’t tack on step this time. Just almost.
“I did what any mom would do.”
“If we must be mother and daughter, I would not mind playing along when it benefits me,” she said sullenly. But that was just part of her personality. I’d wonder what was wrong if she suddenly started acting all sweet like Falfa.
“Let’s go back to reception, then.”
“Um, Lady Azusa, we’re forgetting something!” Laika stopped me.
I looked back, wondering if I dropped something, but I realized what she meant.
The chalk elephant!
It wasn’t going to be easy taking this big boy back with us. But Laika could carry it on her back if she was in dragon form…
“Oh, we may leave the elephant as it is. I am not taking it home,” Wynona said lightly. So she hadn’t forgotten about it.
“Were you worried because it might have parents or children?”
If she was going to leave behind the elephant she’d been so fixated on before, then she’d had a considerable change of heart. The terrain and climate were nothing like her manor, either, so maybe she was thinking about that as well.
“No.” She waved her hand, showing me I was wrong. “The elephant is rather gray and dingy for a ‘chalk’ elephant… I no longer need it…”
“The wrong hue?! Really?!”
Afterward, we returned with a lot to show for our efforts, and the marks we got were quite high—
And we placed first in the skills-review tournament!
To be honest, I wasn’t terribly surprised. I mean, the Black Knights basically handed us all their hard work. They attacked us first, so we didn’t feel too bad accepting it.
When the results came out, we found ourselves surrounded by other adventurers.
“Congrats, Wynnie!”
“I’m going to sketch you, so please look this way!”
“Please make a cool pose!”
“I hope you get first overall!”
Wynona really was like an idol. Laika and I decided to support her from the sidelines.
But then people started coming to us, too.
“Congratulations, Azusard!”
“I hope you do well in your next endeavor!”
“Will you work as a trio again?”
Apparently, I had fans now…
But what was going on beside me was more terrifying.
“You were amazing, Laika!”
“You’re a red dragon, right?”
“I’ll make plans to go to a red-dragon hot spring on my next vacation!”
“I’ll vote for you next time!”
“Me too!”
“You definitely have my vote!”
I had no idea she’d get more of a crowd than Wynona…
No matter where Laika went, she was picture-perfect.
“Oh, no… I am not working as an adventurer all the time… This was simply a temporary arrangement…”
Laika was completely embarrassed, which was only attracting more fans. And she couldn’t pretend not to be affected by all this, so there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Wynona’s reaction was somewhat mixed.
“If Laika gets more votes than me, I will be a bit jealous.”
“You and Laika have different kinds of fans, so I think you’ll be fine…”
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