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Since we’ll be working with the Order of Mages again starting tomorrow, we decided to go greet the leader today.
While we were walking in the hallway heading to his office, we saw Jeff on the way.

「Oh, hey princesses. I haven’t seen you two lately, did something happen?」
「Yeah, we actually got a long-ish break.」
「I had one together with Natsuki as well. Anything new with you Jeff?」
「Nothing really new, but I’ve been sent to places and stuff. Just going off and back and away again, you know? I actually just arrived here too.」

Oh geez, that sounds tough. This applies to the patrol guards, the Order of Knights, and the Order of Mages too but excluding the usual management and military jobs, we also handle disaster management and rescue work.

So the Order of Knights, since there’s a lot of them, are in charge of large-scale disasters while the more flexible Order of Mages handles small-scale ones. The guards handle the other miscellaneous jobs like evacuation and stuff.
Naturally, since large-scale disasters don’t happen that often, these jobs generally go to the Order of Mages, yeah.

Since that’s how things are, there are actually quite a lot of mages like Jeff that keep going back and forth from here to other places.

「Good job. When things settle down, let’s get some drinks with everybody.」
「Well that sounds great and all, but just when did you start drinking?」
「Hehe, some time ago.」

Ever since we went drinking with Firu and Cain, I’ve been drinking every now and then. To be honest, buying a bottle and drinking with Ruti at home is one of the things I look forward to these days.

After seeing Jeff off, we arrived in front of the leader’s office. Since there was a reply when we knocked on the door, we entered the room and saw that Nera-san was there too.

「Long time no see Leader, Nera-san. Thanks a lot for the break.」
「I really appreciated it too. Thanks to that, I’m feeling absolutely better now.」
「It looks like the two of you are back in shape. Well, we’ll make sure that you work your break’s worth, so don’t worry too much.」
「I just hope you won’t be too hard on us.」

I can’t really say anything else since they really adjusted for us, so I just replied while the two of us wore strained smiles.

「By the way, why are you here, Nera-san? Don’t you usually have training around this time??」
「The truth is, there’s been development on the cases of the bandits we investigated. So I came here to discuss with the leader.」

The bandits that time, huh. Don’t tell me that the Order of Mages are going to subjugate them or something……

「At first I thought of letting our order handle them, but after considering our numbers, it might be somewhat difficult for us. So I brought up the issue of the bandits during the assembly. Because of that, I requested that the Order of Knight handle them instead…… But in the end, because of reasons, it was decided that we go.」

Ugeh, I didn’t actually want to be right about that.

「By the way, what do you mean by “reasons”?」
「To cut it short, the Order of Knights didn’t have any vacancy in their schedule.」

It seems like the leader was really persistent on having the much larger Order of Knights take the case. But he says that the Order of Knight have already planned on doing large-scale and extremely long-spanning monster and magic beast exterminations that the union can’t handle.
Since this schedule was already announced in a previous assembly, the leader still requested after taking that into account, but since a part of the troops were already sent in advance, they said that they can’t reorganise the troops now.

「But then, can’t we just wait for them to return and then ask them again?」
「If we did, the bandit subjugation wouldn’t be happening until before summer. We can’t leave them be for that long now, could we? It’s obvious considering the damage they’ll do, but it’ll also damage our reputation.」

Before summer, then…… almost half a year from now, I think. Now that he mentioned it, if we ignored them for that long, it’ll be like “What is the government even doing?” and stuff, so yeah.

「So again, we’re going to form a subjugation force for this, but it’s not as if we’re idling around ourselves. After all, clearly most of us are still busy going around all over the place even now. With that said, Nera-kun and I are currently planning about what to do.」

「I see. So when would it probably happen?」

「At the very least, if we immediately start preparing after only processing the highest priority cases that absolutely need to be done, then we could probably leave right about the beginning of spring.」

The start of spring, huh…… Even though we can move faster than the Order of Knights, seeing that we can only go that early even after cancelling all low priority cases, I guess that’s just how busy we are too.

「Moreover, everyone other than the rookies and a few veterans are all joining the subjugation force. Even after doing that, we still have barely twice the people the bandits have, so we absolutely can’t let our guard down. 」

The Order of Mages has about less than 150 members in total. The Order of Knights has about a thousand and that’s really a big difference.
This is because the requirement for joining the Order of Mages is being proficient with magic, it’s really affecting the recruitment. On the other hand, the requirement for joining the Order of Knights is just being healthy and capable of magic power circulation, so it’s surprisingly difficult for us to find qualified recruits. Even if you can use magic power circulation, it doesn’t make you automatically good with magic after all.
The leader even regularly worries about finding and securing new recruits.

「Since the rookies aren’t joining, we’ll be staying as well, correct?」
「Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The two of you, particularly Ruti-kun, are better with magic than any regular veteran after all. You can’t call yourselves rookies, you know?」

I thought so. After all, in training, we’re the only ones always paired with veterans.

「For now, that’s our current situation. I’ll have Nera-kun contact you two once we settle on the details, so focus on training until then.」
「「Understood.」」

We aren’t even back to work yet and all we hear is bad news, huh. Anyway, so we don’t get injured, let’s make sure to train properly.