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A little before Lucella woke up in the dragon’s nest.

A town that faced Mount Kuguse, Kugutfulm.

There, in the rented room on the second floor that the party “Seventh Dice” used as the base for their operations.

“S̲h̲i̲t̲! In the end, we lost the best treasure.”

Gemel was looking regretful as he stared at the gold coin pouch before him.

This amount of money was a big sum. However, if things went as planned, this pouch would’ve been four times bigger.

“Don’t be like that. Didn’t we get a ton of precious herbs?”
“Yeah, the dragon mountain lives up to its name.”

Unlike Gemel, who was lamenting about letting a fish escape, the rest of the members were all smiles.

Kugutfulm was the closest town to Mount Kuguse.

It flourished through the river that flowed from the mountain and agriculture, and was also a famous hot spring resort.

However, Mount Kuguse itself was mostly untouched. Adventurers tended to rush into every cave and ruin they found, but the branch of the Adventurer’s Guild of this town had prohibited entry into the mountain.

The first reason was simple—Mount Kuguse was far too dangerous due to the red dragon that lived there and the swarming monsters that ‘mutated’ into stronger beings.

Another reason was, the kingdom on the mountain’s north side, Maltgartz, and the one on its south, Setulev, were both claiming rights over Mount Kuguse, so the Adventurer’s Guild, which had a principle to stay out of politics, found it hard to make a move on a mountain that belonged to both kingdoms. However, some of these problems stemming from this confrontation were simply shelved because both kingdoms had a ban on entering it.

At any rate, banned danger zone it may be, it was also a treasure trove of resources.

Poachers blinded by money occasionally went in and often ended up dead.

The “Seventh Dice” was one of the lucky cases. They entered with five people and came out with four, and made a huge profit with the resources they brought back.

They were quite an ill-minded party and often made money through dishonest means.

They were well knowledgeable in how to convert valuables into money in a way that they couldn’t be traced when they didn’t want to disclose the origins.

This coin pouch was the result of that.

“Getting this much money at the expense of one handyman is quite a nice deal if you ask me.”
“Yeah, that……”

As the members spoke with smiles, the giant Gemel also broke into a flippant smile.

But then, he suddenly turned serious.

“Hey, what was that guy’s name again?”
“Huh?”
“Come on now, even if he was an incompetent parasite, did you actually forget his…”

Then, silence followed.

The “Seventh Dice” employed a manager.

A manager for adventurer parties was actually a pretty rare job. But “he” always went around asking various parties to employ him as one.

The reason Gemel hired “him” was simply because he needed someone to clean the house they were renting as their base.

“He” worked well.

Given that he called himself a manager, “he” didn’t only do the chores but also handled the procedures at the Adventurer’s Guild.

Gemel had thus paid “him” a wage suitable for a handyman.

But what made him fed up was that “he” started to butt in on their adventurer work. “He” kept saying things like ‘this is dangerous,’ or ‘don’t do this,’ asking to let money making ideas slip away, and instead bringing bothersome jobs, which Gemel himself had to reject. “He” even researched about monsters they were going to face during the commissions and even proudly blabbered on about the knowledge that served no purpose in actual battles, making Gemel feel like shutting “him” up with a punch.

“He” had no talent for fighting, not even magic.

But Gemel thought “he” was under the conviction that adventuring with first-class adventurers (that Gemel considered himself to be) had turned “him” into a skilled adventurer too, thus Gemel ended up nicknaming “him” a parasite.

A parasite like “him” ended up willingly accompanying them to Mount Kuguse, and eventually became a scapegoat.

Gemel thought “he” should’ve been satisfied after doing something adventurer-like at the very end. He considered “him” trash, so he didn’t particularly feel bad about killing “him”.

But he couldn’t remember “his” name now.

“Huh? I can’t remember.”
“Same here…”
“The f̲u̲c̲k̲? His name was obviously………huh?”

They all had expressions of people during the morning of a hangover.

They had met many ominous things during their adventures, but this was ominous in a different sense.

The process aside, the “Seventh Dice” had spent over a year with “him.” How was it possible to forget his name?

“We have his adventurer card, right?”
“O-Oh, yeah. It should have his name on it…”

Gemel took out the silver plate from the backpack left in the corner. It was the adventurer card that the Adventurer’s Guild issued.

It contained the owner’s name and numerical figures called the ‘Stats’. If you found the adventurer’s card near the skeleton during your adventures, you’d be able to tell who it was.

Adventurers had this concept of Stats.

It was the numerical representation of a person’s individual abilities, and it was based on the ability calculation technique that was reproduced using a relic that the ancient prosperous civilization supposedly used in some sort of game.

The adventurer’s cards that the Adventurer’s Guild issued had this technology implemented at some point, and they automatically displayed the owner’s abilities in numerical form.

By adopting this concept of Stats, certain aspects of the adventurers’ abilities were accurately visualized, making it impossible to lie about your skills. It served as a fixed standard both for the clients and the management, and it also served for the adventurers to show off their skills.

However, it was also pointed out that it caused people to make light of the abilities not represented through the numerics…

One such adventurer’s card now displayed something very strange.

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“His” name should have been displayed on it in soot-like characters.

But now, it had disappeared as if something had painted it over.

“Why’s his HP still there? Shouldn’t it be 0 since he’s dead?”
“Wait, rather than that, his name… isn’t this weird? What the heck’s going on?”

The four of them peered into “his” adventurer’s plate and held their breaths.

“Adventure’s plate is some kind of toy of the ancients, right? God knows how that thing actually works, so maybe it broke in some unexpected situation…”
“It ain’t gonna break so easily.”

They wanted to confirm “his” name but it was broken, but what bothered Gemel more than that was the HP part.

HP was the numeric form of one’s life force. It decreased if the body suffered damage, and hitting zero meant death.

Gemel had certainly stabbed “him” to death. He didn’t deal the finishing blow to make “him” a more appealing bait, but “he” was at death’s door nonetheless. He should have died as is.

“Did that b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲ keep a recovery potion on him?”
“W-What do we do?! If that b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲ returns alive, we’re goners…!”
“Calm the f̲u̲c̲k̲ down! Did you forget where we left him?”

Gemel yelled to calm down the flustered members.

“Even if he managed to survive, he’ll just end up as a monster or the dragon’s food. If he’s still alive, he’s probably hiding somewhere, but he’ll just starve to death in the end. We should just keep observing this and wait until it hits zero. Once that happens we can finally raise the toast for the profit we made.”