I Was Believed

“Very well. …Please don’t feel too bad about it…well, of course, you would feel bad. But, I do hope you can recover from this tragedy. Even if there were casualties, you fought and defeated a Cannibal Tigre. You should be proud.”

She said consolingly as she looked through a thick stack of papers and then at my guild card.

Then her voice rose in confusion.

“…There you are. Adventurer Yuji. D-Rank… B-Rank Scout… Solo Adventurer!?”

“Yeah. Like I was saying, right?”

“Yes, it is indeed written here… But that makes it seem like you killed the Cannibal Tigre by yourself…”

She flipped through the pages.

However, she was unable to find anything to suggest I fought while teamed up with others.

“I’m not alone. I fought it with my monsters. I’m a Tamer, after all.”

“No, that’s not the problem… Uh, I’m going to have to ask someone else about this! …Miss Megia!”

She shouted towards the back.

And then…a receptionist who looked like a veteran came out.

This was probably Megia.

“Airia. What is it?”

“This guy brought in a Cannibal Tigre corpse… And he claims that he killed it himself!”

“…I see. Well, then. Can you show me the body?”

“Yeah.”

And so I took the Cannibal Tigre out of the bag.

Megia insepected it…and then muttered.

“I don’t see any blade wounds. It was likely killed…by fire and ice magic attacks.”

She could tell by just looking at it.

There were some burned spots, so it was obvious I used fire…but how did she know I used ice magic as well?

“Hmmm… I think this was the work of a single sorcerer of great power. It doesn’t seem like it was killed by a lot of people.”

“Bu-but this guy is a Tamer!?”

“…Yes, a Tamer wouldn’t be able to do this. Perhaps he just brought in the corpse and wanted to take credit…”

Megia started to say this but then paused.

Then her eyes traveled to the slime on my shoulder…and then shifted to the guild card that was on the counter.

“I see. He is probably not lying.”

“What!?”

Airia shouted with surprise when she heard Megia’s words.

Megia turned to her and continued.

“…Yuji. The magic-using Tamer. …Doesn’t that ring a bell to you?”

“Ah… Now that you mention it, I think I have heard rumors…”

“This is probably Yuji himself. …From what I heard about him, it would not be surprising if he killed a Cannibal Tigre by himself.”

…What kind of rumors was she talking about?

I had a bad feeling about this…

What if the rumors had spread to the Ordarion guild as well?

If that happened, all of my efforts to get taken off the assassination list were for nothing…

…Well, I guess that I could find out through the slimes.

If something like that was happening, then I would have to think of a way of dealing with it.

“Uhh… In any case, we’ll have it processed as a solo hunt.”

The receptionist said as she stamped the sheet.

So I got 30 million cicols for killing a monster on my way here. I felt quite lucky.

“So, where did you kill this monster?”

“I killed it at the bottom of a ravine.”

“A ravine…?”

“Yeah. I was traveling from Ordarion, but the bridge was down. And so I had no choice but to go down it…and then the monster found us.”

“You went into the ravine!?”

Airia and Megia looked at me as if they did not believe me at all.

They looked at each other…then Megia asked me,

“That ravine is called the Iriarch Ravine… There are many monsters there due to the terrain! …Surely, you would have been able to tell, as you’re a B-Rank Scout!?”

“Ahh. Yes, there were a lot of monsters.”

With the slimes’s magic detection ability, I was able to tell that there were a lot of monsters concentrated in the area. Still, the only monster that had been able to catch up to the Proud Wolf was the Cannibal Tigre.

“…Uh, we were running very fast, so we made it somehow.”

“But surely running away would not have been possible with that number of monsters!?”

“Well, I’m a B-Rank Scout. I’m good at knowing where the monsters are and where they are going.”

…Actually, it was really just the speed of the Proud Wolf that helped me.

It would be more accurate to say that we hadn’t avoided the monsters so much as left them in the dust.