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Rir and I arrived at the inn where we had been staying before the incident happened, and went inside.

“Uhm… excuse me….”
“Welcome, how can I… Wha-!?”

The innkeeper was so shocked at seeing us, he ended up screaming.

“We were staying here until just a week ago, but…”
“You… you’re Mr. Shuu? I heard you were attacked by a magic beast and lost your life!? Are… are you a ghost…?”
“I ain’t no ghost! I’m still alive!”

Afterwards, I somehow managed to convince him that weren’t dead. From what the innkeeper told us, while we were gone, he had kept our room empty for the number of days we had paid for, so he couldn’t return our money.
Well, nothin’ to do ’bout that.

As compensation, he gave us back the luggage we had left in our room. He had apparently planned to dispose of it tomorrow… We hadn’t left anything valuable there, so it wouldn’t have been a huge issue, but it still was a close call.

When I asked him whether we could stay the night, he had to disappoint us, since there apparently were no vacancies.

Next, Rir and I went to the adventurer’s guild to ask what had become of the request we had accepted. Normally, if you failed a quest, you apparently had to pay a fine of up to 5% of the reward money.

“Excuse me, Ma’am, we are the party ‘Red Ears’, and we were unable to finish a request we accepted one week ago due to an accident…” I told the receptionist lady as we handed her our guild cards.
“Indeed, Sir Shuu and Lady Rir of the Red Ears… eh… huh… Wha-~!?”

The elf receptionist also reacted with shock. Moreover, we were in the guild… where numerous people were present, so after hearing that scream just now, several adventurers closed in on us.

“What is it, did something happen!?”
“What’s going on?”

A crowd formed around us.

I didn’t want to cause any weird misunderstandings, so I slowly told them what had happened from when we were met with disaster until we managed to return to the city. Almost all the adventurers here had assumed we were ghosts. SS-Rank magic beasts were apparently seen as such outliers… an encounter with them was thought to result in certain death.

“Dats gread… really gread, Dude… *sniff*.”
“Oh~, *sob*\, I’m so glad…”

To convince everyone that we weren’t ghosts, I had given them the same explanation as I gave to Thor. The gambling addicts, who had called out to me the very first time I had visited the guild, ended up breaking into tears. There were also other adventurers who voiced their admiration.

We turned down their suggestion to have a feast with a “We still have things to take care of,” and fled the building.
For the time bein’, I’ve learned what I wanted to.

Apparently, due to the emergence of an SS-Rank magic beast being such a (at least from the view of the general public) insurmountable incident, we didn’t have to pay a fine for our failed request.

From the snippets we could hear from outside the guild, we learned that they’d hold the party, even if Rir and I weren’t present.

Well… dunno ’bout Rir, but I ain’t drinkin’ any alcohol… I’m still a minor¹.

“Master, we’re should we go next? Will we already meet with them?”
“Not yet. I wanna get rid of some luggage by sellin’ monster materials and gemstones, but… let’s have lunch first. It’s already half past 12… maybe we should’ve joined that feast?”
“No, I’d prefer it to have lunch just with you, Master.”
“Gotcha… Then let’s go eat pizza².”
“Alright!”

Rir and I went to a place where they served pizza.

At any rate, I wanna eat some food made with cheese and other dairy stuff and wheat.

We each ordered a different, normal sized pizza and shared half with each other. Though that wasn’t enough for me, so I also ate some fried potatoes.

Next, we went to the store that bought and sold everything, from tools to magic beast materials and weapons. There, I sold the bodies of the Screw Hawks we no longer needed since the request had been voided, and 20 of their evolved versions, Descent Hawks³, of which we had killed scores in the dungeon.

They were rather shocked, but seeing this was the country’s largest store, they were apparently able to foot the money to buy everything I was trying to sell. It totaled up to 13’208’000 bells… or 132.08 million yen.

I seriously don’t get how they have this kinda money ready.

I got worried, so I asked them, but… they said that they dealt with such things on a regular basis. I was apparently the first customer to sell 20 B-Rank⁴ magic beasts at once… but they did buy S-Rank monsters occasionally.

Consequently, I ended up becoming a VIP of their merchant association. Though than meant they wanted me to give them preferential treatment when selling monster materials.
Well… not like I know another place to sell my stuff, so I don’t mind.

“10 million… woof… woof~… 10 million bells…”
“We still have all those myrmecoleons, don’t we? If we sold everything, we’d probably get around 100 billion bells.”
“Eek…”

I took Rir’s hand (she had started trembling a bit after hearing that number), and we went to a public bathhouse, and then to the place where you could rent apartments in the high-class residential district Thor had mentioned. With that VIP member registration and all, it was already 3 pm. Well… the main reason it took so long, was that I had enjoyed a long soak at the bath, which I only rarely did.

The apartment complex, where Kanata and Sakura apparently lived, looked rather extravagant and expansive. Normally, I could never afford live in such a place, no matter what I tried.
Well… as I am now, guess I could.

When Rir saw that building, she started trembling. It wasn’t just a little; her body shook so much, it felt like something might come loose. While calming her down by rubbing her back, we entered the rental complex.

Then, we immediately made a beeline for the reception.

“Excuse me.”
“Welcome to Home Loyalty, dear customers! How might I be of service?”

The receptionist was a beautiful female elf.
Somehow, there’s lots of elves workin’ as receptionists in public facilities and high-class stores in this country, ain’t there?

What about Rir? She had fallen silent and was still trembling.

“Erm… We came here to meet with some acquaintances, Ma’am. Do you have two tenants called Kanata and Sakura? They have the same black hair and eyes as I have…”
“Sir Kanata… and Lady Sakura, correct? Indeed, they live here. Would you like me to call them, Sir?”
“Please do… If you tell them my name is Shuu… and that I’m the ‘best friend of that girlish 11th grader’, they’ll understand.”

I always wanted to use that “If you tell them… they’ll understand” phrase, y’know. Though I probably wouldn’t have needed it here. I just wanted to use it.

“You are Mr. Shuu… and you’re the ‘best friend of that girlish elevengrader⁵‘, correct?”
“Yes.”
“I shall let them know.”

After giving us a bow, the elf receptionist left for someplace else in the expansive mansion.

TL notes:
This chapter marks the end of volume 11. Phew, that sure was a long one.

This is also the point where the plotlines finally start to converge, with Shuu being on the cusp of reuniting with Kanata and Sakura, and Loukis and Dace getting closer and closer to putting their evil plan into motion.

1. I’ve been wondering this for a while, but why do web/light novels put this extreme emphasis on not drinking before reaching the legal drinking age? Where I live, you are allowed to drink beer and wine at 16, but half my classmates back then had already drunk alcohol before they turned 14.
2. I don’t remember Alim introducing Pizza to Anazumu (he did cook it when he visited the castle in chapter 124, but would the castle chefs distribute the recipe so far, it’d reach a hostile nation?), so maybe that’s something pizza-ish the natives came up with?
3. The original is デサントフーク (desantofuuku). I assume the first part is the English “descent”.
4. In chapter 280, these birds dropped C-Rank magic cores, so, unless they are deteriorated specimens, they should be C-Rank, not B-Rank.
5. In his request, Shuu uses the expression 高2, an abbreviation of 高校２年 (“second year of high school”). The receptionist obviously doesn’t know that expression, so when she repeats it, it’s written as コォニ (a slightly off pronunciation of the word in Katakana, like a foreign word). I tried to reflect this in English.