Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Volume 5

by Funa

“Ahaha…”

  Mile laughed dryly before explaining.

  “So you’re saying,” Reina replied, once Mile was through, “that that guild master is the one who endorsed your enrollment for the Hunters’ Prep School?”

  “Ah, yes. He is.”

  “Then that means he’s your benefactor, isn’t he?! And it’s thanks to him that we all met! But…for a guild master, who would have to take full responsibility if anything went wrong, to give his endorsement to a little girl who he’d only just met, he would either have to be a fool, an idiot, or some old creep with an ulterior motive. So, which one is he? He didn’t really seem like an outright fool, so…”

  “Er, uhm. I-It’s because he’s a good person!”

  “Come again?”

  “I said, he’s a good person!”

  Ah, so he’s a softhearted idiot, then… the other three correctly concluded.

  The girls checked the board but found only worthless jobs posted there and decided to give up looking for work in this town. They would head out first thing in the morning. Just then, Laura, who had finished making their reservations, returned, and shortly after that, the guild master once again descended from the second floor, too.

  “Well then, shall we?”

  The girls were not about to turn down free food. They followed happily behind the two guild employees.

  They arrived at an inn of a reasonable size for such a small town. On the first floor were a dining hall and kitchen. The third floor had living quarters for the innkeepers and their family along with storage space, while on the second floor were rooms for the inn’s guests. Since they were already there, the girls decided to reserve a room at the inn before they dined. That way, it wouldn’t matter if they stuffed themselves so much they couldn’t walk.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come back to us. Welcome home! Laura and I saw you at the graduation exam. What a splendid fight that was…” said the guild master.

  Mile was shocked.

  “Huh? You came to watch?”

  “Yes, of course! Why, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to watch the one I recommended making her formal debut! Plus, thanks to you graduating with such high marks, my reputation’s grown as well. I was the recipient of this year’s New Talent Discovery Award, and my rank as a guild master has gone up! And it’s all thanks to you, Miss Mile!”

  The guild master was truly overjoyed.

  “Of course, we enjoyed watching the rest of you all as well. Miss Pauline, where can I start? You specialize in healing magic, but then there was that small but powerful firebomb! And the healing magic itself—why, that would rival any court magician—no, perhaps even surpass them! A healing spell that can mend a broken bone in an instant? Wow! And Miss Mavis, when you used your Godspeed Blade, your sword moved so fast I could barely even see it! And Miss Reina! You specialize in attack magic, but your iron-clad defense was so intimidating that you sealed the victory without firing a single spell!”

  Apparently, the guild master had watched each of their fights with rapt attention. As he gushed over them, the girls couldn’t help but feel a tad embarrassed, but it was not really a bad feeling. They all thought that they had put on a splendid performance as well and could accept his words not as pure flattery but as honest praise.

  “And of course, there was Miss Mile’s fight! That was truly amazing!”

  And with that, the guild master began to reminisce:

  It was a head-on fight against Gren, the great sword wielder, leader of the B-rank party the Roaring Mithrils, and an A-rank hunter himself—a high-speed bout against an A-rank swordsman on equal turf, daring to go sword-to-sword without using any spells. Then, there was the powerful volley, the tactical footwork, and the magical blade she had shown off!

  It was as good as a fight between two A-ranks. If only a minimum period of time as a registered hunter and the requisite contribution points weren’t required for promotion, he would insist that she take the A-rank test immediately.

  It was because he had witnessed her skill with his own eyes that he had given his endorsement.

  What began as a failing on the part of his subordinate had now, on the contrary, become a point of promotion for himself. The feeling that he had somehow cheated his way into this victory was not insignificant, but it was not as though he had done anything embarrassing or wrong. He had endorsed her enrollment in the prep school to cover for his subordinate’s mistake, fully prepared to take responsibility on the off chance that anything should go awry. It was as though the Goddess herself had smiled down upon his faithfulness…

  Remembering all this, the guild master was deeply moved.

  And so the festivities began, with Laura telling the lively tale of Mile’s “Great Sword Slicing” and “Copper Coin Cutting” incidents, which she had not witnessed firsthand but had heard a great deal about regardless.

  The whole group—save for Mile, who was still underage—all had a bit of wine. (Though, truthfully, there was no minimum drinking age in this country. Mile had placed restraints on herself, owing to memories from her past life…)

  In exchange, Mile and Reina ate like pigs—so much so that whoever was paying would normally have been in agony, holding their head in their hands. Yet, as far as the guild master—whose pay had risen in tandem with his rank thanks to Mile—was concerned, such matters were trivial.

  Seeing how thrilled the guild master was that the Crimson Vow had been doing so well, the girls decided to tell him the truth about the Elder Dragon-Beastmen Investigation Incident—or at least as much of the truth as would not cause any problems. Since a fair amount of time had passed, they thought he had probably already heard some twisted version of the story in the form of rumors anyway.

  The guild master, overjoyed at receiving such valuable information, drank the stories right up. For a guild master, who usually only heard news of what was causing trouble, a success story like this was the sweetest wine.

  This girl was like a supernova, a shining beacon of hope for the guild: a girl who would without a doubt rise to an A-rank—no, S-rank would be well within her grasp—who he himself had discovered and had lifted up to the world (or at least, who had come to be lifted).

  The renowned party of beautiful young newcomers—all four of whom had graduated at the very top of their class and become household names within a day of their graduation—had graced this town with their presence. The girl who he had given up on ever seeing again had returned and brought her new allies back with her.

  This was the dawn of a sparkling future for the guild in this sleepy little town. Perhaps they would now be able to contend with their own difficult jobs, which they had been forced to forward to branches in other towns or the capital in the past.

  Their branch. His branch.

  The branch that he himself led, from the guild master’s chair…

  This was the greatest day of his life.

  These were the fancies that drifted through the guild master’s mind.

  ***

  The next day…

  The guild master ended up having a bit more to drink than he intended, but even so, he would never dare be late to work. Granted, he did not arrive before the morning job rush as he usually would, but such early arrivals were merely for the sake of warding off scuffles. At the very least, he got going well before the second morning bell (around 9 AM), with plenty of time to spare.

  The receptionist, Laura, always arrived well before the guild master. While she was in between clients, he popped over to where she sat behind the reception counter, showing no sign of being hungover from the previous night’s festivities, and struck up a conversation.

  “I wonder if the Crimson Vow are off on some job today, then?”

  “Ah, yes,” Laura replied. “They stopped by early this morning, thanked us for last night, and then said their farewells. They talked a bit with the hunters who were present at the time before heading out…”

  The guild master bobbed his head in approval.r />
  “Oh, it must be nice to be so young. Showing up first thing in the morning and heading off to work without even taking a break. So, which job did they take?”

  “Well, none of them.”

  “What?”

  The guild master cocked his head, perplexed.

  “Well, they said that they would be heading straight on to the next town, and since there didn’t seem to be any suitable escort duty requests currently available, they didn’t take anything at all… They did say that they might hunt some of the monsters from the daily requests or attempt to harvest some for parts along the way…”

  “What?”

  The guild master could not make sense of what he was hearing.

  “No…but…I thought that those girls had come back to this town to live here and that they were going to work here as hunters, and…”

  “Hm? What are you saying, sir…? They’re a group of hopeful rookies looking to make their mark on the world. You can’t expect them to move to a backwater town like this with barely any jobs to go around. They merely stopped by to see us on their travels—isn’t that obvious?”

  “Wh… Wh-whaaaaaaaaat?!?!”

  The guild master crumpled to the floor, all the color draining from his face.

  His happiness had been nothing more than a fleeting dream…

  ***

  “I hope there are some fun jobs in the next town!” Mile remarked cheerfully as the four walked down the highway.

  “Not fun, Miley! Profitable!” Pauline corrected.

  “No, what we really need are jobs that will give us the most promotion points so that we can hurry up and rise up to B-rank and then A-rank…” argued Mavis.

  “So then,” said Reina, “all we need to do is find jobs that are fun, with good pay, and that’ll get us a lot of promotion points—right? Now then, on to the next town! And if we come across any daily-task monsters or harvest-worthy animals, we’ll hunt those, too! We four may be lacking in power, lacking in sense, and lacking in experience—but most importantly, we’re lacking in money!”

  The other three grimaced.

  However, this was a journey of self-improvement and a journey to earn money. And so, as always, the three replied in unison:

  “Yeah!!!”

  Considering that they were on a journey without destination, Mile had left the decision-making up to Reina, with her experience of a life on the road. Now she thought back to the town they had just left: My, isn’t it nice to happen upon old memories like that? Yet she failed to realize the most important thing:

  That town was the one that she had first arrived in when she fled her home country. From there, she had gone directly to the capital, which was located right in the middle of the Kingdom of Tils. Now, they had departed from said capital and arrived at that town…

  Mile did not stop to think where they would end up if they continued traveling straight ahead.

  And so, the Crimson Vow proceeded. Down along the highway, with their beloved capital directly at their backs and their hearts full of wonder at what might lie waiting for them further down the road.

  ***

  “What did you say?!”

  In the royal office of the Kingdom of Tils, a scene was unfolding. Within the walls were the king, the prime minister, the sword master Count Christopher—a living legend who had risen from the ranks of a humble hunter all the way to nobility—and the guild master of the capital branch of the Hunters’ Guild.

  “Did I not tell you to ensure they remained with us?!” the king yelled in rage, hearing the guild master’s report.

  Count Christopher tried his best to pacify him.

  “Now now, Your Majesty, as the Master said, it is not as though those girls intend to relocate to another country entirely. They’re on a journey of self-improvement, where they hope to find interesting new trials—jobs that are challenging, worth doing. It’s only a natural thing for young hunters to want to do.”

  “Now that you mention it, you’ve said that you did the same—didn’t you, Christopher? Traveling around the land when you were a hunter. And even since you became a count, there’ve been rumors of you sneaking off to other countries without the permission of the palace…”

  “Ah, hahaha….”

  The count tried to laugh the accusation off, scratching his head. Then he continued, offering up a bit more in the guild master’s defense.

  “W-well, a hunter does what a hunter does… Anyway, when there are gaps in their journey, or once they’ve had their fill, I’m sure they’ll come back here and settle down. I was the same, wasn’t I? After all, the girl named Pauline has family here still, as well as a business that her family runs. And Lady Mavis is a member of one of our country’s noble families. Plus, for Mavis, should push come to shove…”

  “Should push come to shove?” the king asked.

  The count gave a wicked grin.

  “We make her a knight—the thing that she’s been dreaming of. Once appointed to knighthood, she’d be in for life. Then we pair her up with some promising young lad from another martial line, and she’ll have no desire to travel off to any other land, remaining here to spread her skill and talent throughout this country.”

  “Hm…”

  The count’s proposal seemed to finally calm the king down.

  “However, there’s still Mile. What do we do about her? She hails from another country, doesn’t she? Is there not a possibility that she’ll simply return to the land where she was born?”

  “Not from what we’ve gathered from speaking to her classmates. The rumor is that she was the daughter of a formerly noble family, chased from her home country for some reason or other. The fact that she has such soft and delicate hands, which do not show the marks of life’s difficulties, and that she often says and does things that demonstrate an ignorance of the wider world are testament to the truth of that theory. If all this is true, then our plan is obvious.”

  The king urged the count to continue with his eyes, incensed that he would stop just when things were getting good. In response, Christopher raised the thumb of his left hand and jabbed it toward himself.

  “We make her just like me. She’s a little girl who’s lost her country, her home, and her status as a noble. Your Highness has borne witness to her ability and decides to make her a noble again. Don’t you think that your faithful subjects would find this quite the inspiration?”

  “I see!!!”

  The cry came at once from all three of the others in the room, who were deeply impressed by the count’s proposal.

  Obviously, there was no reason to raise her to the rank of counthood like Christopher. They could make her a baroness, or give her the lifelong peerage of a knight, or even simply a baronetess—which was barely a noble but significant nonetheless.

  “Guild Master, have you any objections to this?” asked the king. “If we pursue this, it may set a precedent…”

  The guild master looked a little troubled, and his reply was noncommittal: “Well, ah, if we’re speaking of precedents, technically such a thing has already happened a number of times before…”

  “What?!”

  “Er, well, just as Count Christopher said previously, a hunter does what a hunter does… For most people who become hunters the normal way, it’s quite standard to travel to different countries in your youth. Even amongst the graduates of the Hunters’ Prep School, a number of individuals have already set off on journeys without waiting the full five years. We did not forbid this because to do so would have drawn the ire of hunters as a group…

  “Of course, we don’t permit them to formally relocate out of the country. We make sure they are aware that this must only be a temporary expedition and that their travels outside of our borders do not count toward their five years of service to the country. We impress strongly upon them that after a certain amount of time has passed, they must return home.

  “Those girls are incredibly young and abnormally skilled. We considered that they
might find themselves courted by strangers from other lands and tried our best to get them to stay, but it seemed that they were already aware of the precedent. Plus, they threatened to become quite a nuisance to the guild, so in the end we could not deny them…”

  “……”

  The king and prime minister appeared grim. Count Christopher, of course, was already aware of this.

  “Considering the timing, one might wonder whether those girls’ sudden actions have something to do with that incident…”

  “Indeed, I was considering that…” said the king.

  The prime minister and the count nodded in reply.

  “In that case, this might be a good thing. We don’t have to pay for any formal jobs, and should anything out of the ordinary happen… Why, they are merely a single group of hunters acting independently for whom neither the country nor the guild can be expected to take responsibility. At the same time, should those girls achieve great success on foreign soil, then they are still citizens of this country and on the register of this country’s guild—which means that their achievements can be claimed as all thanks to us.”

  This time, the count was the one to knit his brows at the king’s shrewd analysis.

  “Well, they are still a group of wide-eyed young rookies. Perhaps we should have a bit more consideration for them…”

  And so, it was finally decided that the Crimson Vow would be allowed to do as they pleased.

  However, they were absolutely forbidden to re-register, or take up permanent residence, in another country.

  They were forbidden to become entangled with strange, foreign men.

  They were forbidden to get involved with men from their own country as well, should those men be unsuitable or troublemakers.

  And if they were to achieve any great recognition, they would be considered for the peerage.

  Thus was the official ruling.

  And so, in a closed room, entirely unbeknownst to the Crimson Vow, the hurdles for any potential future romance on their parts had just been raised extremely high.