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—Crap… Should I have pretended to fall down?

Looking down at the giant man who had fallen on his backside, Lucella racked his brains on how to get out of this situation.

He had dropped the adventurer card (He didn’t check it assuming it was the man’s as you normally didn’t carry other people’s cards on you), so he must’ve been an adventurer.

The man had boulder-like arms laid bare, giving off the air that he had trained quite a bit.

A man like that had crashed into Lucella at a significant speed, but he was the one getting flung away while Lucella didn’t even feel it. If the pedestrians paid attention they would’ve been puzzled by this event.

But the fact was that a ramming attack from a guy like that was too meager compared to the charges and leaps of the Variants in the mountains, so Lucella didn’t so much as feel it.

But Lucella was well aware that it would be strange from the point of common sense.

Lucella, who looked like a feral child wrapped in nothing but pelts, had borrowed an overcoat to cover it and put the hood on top of it to make her characteristic slitted eyes less noticeable.

It was all to avoid gathering attention and causing a ruckus. So he didn’t want to stand out due to an accident like this.

“Who… is this?”
“R-Right. She’s, well…”
“I’m Lucella. I was in the middle of discussing certain work with Mr. Tim here.”

Lucella gave a pretty random excuse.

“Well, let’s go then, shall we?”
“Yeah…”

While the large man was still dumbfounded, Lucella grabbed Tim by the hand and urged him forward.

He wanted the man to just not overthink it and move on.

—What…? Why does my stomach feel heavy and somehow painful…

Lucella didn’t think he received damage from that impact, but he felt a strange sensation on his abdomen.

“Grrrr……”

Kafal seemed like she couldn’t forgive the man for crashing into Lucella and was glaring past the crowd while breathing with the sound of the bellows.

“Who was that? Your acquaintance?”
“He’s Gemel. He’s an adventurer who has the skill… but that’s his only redeeming part. Even adventuring is ultimately a business. The higher you go the more manners, planning, and patience become essential. But he has none of those.”

Tim criticized him in lament.

“Things were going well for him for some time, but I can’t even look at him lately. If he comes and asks me for help I could do something for him, but…”
“Huh…”
“You’re too soft, Leader. It’s better to not get involved with a scumbag like him!”

Unlike Tim, Wein showed clear scorn towards him, wanting to have to do with him.

Thump.

Lucella heard a burning pounding in his head as if his heart had moved there.

—“Alright, I’ll hire you.”—

A detestable voice like the sticky old oil resounded in his head.

— “From now on, I’ll leave all the odd jobs to you. Don’t even dare slack off.

…What was that? Salary? Hah, if you think this is too low you can do whatever. There are more than enough people out there to replace a handyman.”—

He was condescending, convinced of his own superiority, and domineering.

He toadied to people above him while acting oppressive like an evil god with subordinates and lower ranked people…

It was the voice of that man.

“This voice… Was it the guy from earlier…?”

He felt like he remembered it. Yet, the memories disappeared as soon as they surfaced like bubbles and fell through Lucella’s hands.

“Okay, we’re here. This is the branch of the Adventurer’s Guild.”

As Lucella was absorbed in gathering memories, they arrived at the Adventurer’s Guild.

The Adventurer’s Guild’s branch in Kugutfulm for some reason used a big building —one that was originally a temple— with a clock attached to the bell tower that had its bell removed.

As expected, he felt like he remembered all of this.

The remodeled temple lobby was illuminated by the colorful light from the stained glass of the skylight high above.

In that lobby, on the other side of the counters, there was a pleasant sound of simultaneous explosions.

“Woah, the magic aptitude measuring tool blew up…!!”
“Kyaa, all the elemental detectors too…?!”
“The new dragon aura observation equipment tooooo….!”

The office area turned noisy and the adventurers in the lobby started wondering what was going on.

Meanwhile, Tim called out to the staff member over the counter.

“Looks like it’s quite lively here today.”
“Ah, Mr. Tim! I’m not sure why, but all kinds of things broke all of a sudden…”
“Oh…? Well, I guess things like that happen sometimes.”

Tim answered with a cramped smile and then leaned in and whispered in Lucella’s ear.

“Hey, try to hide things better, will you… There are sharp people here so you’ll get found.”
“I’ll try…”

Erasing your presence was unnecessary during the training on Mount Kuguse.

In the first place, the mountain was filled with the dragon aura that could be said to be Kafal’s presence itself, so sensing others was fundamentally hard. He had no trouble sneaking by just by erasing his sound and smell.

But now that he was no longer on the mountain, that method couldn’t work anymore.

“Did you hear anything about that rumor I mentioned?”
“You mean the dragon interpreter? We did investigate it as best as we could.”

A staff member that seemed close to Tim (perhaps the one in charge of Golden Helmet?) put several notes with neatly written texts on the counter along with some documents.

“There were no records within the guild. However, several adventurers gathered information and we have mostly identified the source of the rumor.”
“I expected no less. And so?”
“…It seems that it started from one adventurer saying they knew someone who could talk with dragons.”
“Oh? And who is it? Stop putting on airs and out with it already.”

Tim spoke with a wry smile at the staff for keeping him in suspense.

“We don’t know…”
“Huh?”
“Let’s refer to them as he for convenience’s sake… He who said to know a dragon interpreter certainly was registered as an adventurer in the guild.

However, last year he was attacked by monsters during a quest. And for some reason… everyone forgot his name at that moment.”

Tim and Lucella were dumbfounded.

It felt like someone taking a walk only to end up in a labyrinth.

“It was one thing to simply forget his name, even the guild’s documents that mentioned his name had disappeared. Not simply lost, but disappeared. Even things that were bound with strings had only the concerned pages missing.

…And since all documents concerning his name disappeared, so did practically all the records about him, and we currently no longer know anything…”

No magic could normally do something like this.

Moreover, they didn’t even know why it happened, and assuming it was erased by someone intentionally, they didn’t know the goal behind it.

The situation was simply that eerie.

“…However, what we do know is that he belonged to the party Seventh Dice.”
“Wait… you mean that guy’s party?”

Tim spoke, his expression going beyond stern and turning bitter.