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Urania enjoyed the Koo Stew. She gives me exaggerated praises as usual, but as expected, her being happy about it made cooking really worth the effort.

The after-meal dessert, pudding, seemed to have stolen Urania’s heart. She says 「If it’s for this, I can do anything」, so I ended up inadvertently taking her lips and Life Essence.

「Mh…… Mnhh!?」
「Mh, Amnh…… Mnmh…… Pwah」
「Haa haa…… It’s troubling, if you do it abruptly.」
「Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.」

My first kiss with Urania since two days ago tasted sweet like pudding. Well, I kissed her right after, or rather, as she was eating pudding, so that’s just natural. Urania says some words of protest, but she doesn’t really look angry, so it’s not like she’s against it, I think.

After that, we pass the day comfortably gazing at the lake, having some tea and dozing off until sunset. Days like these are nice too, huh. I thought to myself while gazing at Urania’s sleeping face.

◆◇◆◇◆

「Alright, you all came, huh! In this time’s mock battle, the hopeful rookie party, “Little Fairies” is joining us too!」
「「「Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!」」」
「First, let’s have the self-introductions. Who’s going first?」

The next day, as promised, Urania and I went to the guild’s training area. Already gathered there waiting for us were more than ten parties, including “Grim March”. Each party varies from three to five people. There doesn’t seem to be parties with only two members like us.

The first ones to introduce themselves were “Grim March” and another C Rank adventurer party, “Invierno Fyne”. They have five members, but they’re a unique party with three Mages with them. Their leader Audrey speaks in a quite slow and calm way, but it looks like she’s related to the Sage of Pisces.

「Though I said that we’re relatives~ It’s not like I can use Magic anyway~ And although I was from the Magecraft Academy~ It’s not like I have any talent, so~ Here I am~ Being something like an adventurer, see~」

She herself was saying things like that, but it seems like her other party members really like her. Everyone followed up by saying 「She’s always like that~」 or 「Audrey’s the only one who’d take dropouts us, you know?」. It looks like she’s good at taking care of people.

By the way, the five members of “Invierno Fyne” are all female, consisted of the spear user vanguard Kety, the shield-bearing vanguard Jessica, Magecraft and sword user Audrey, Magecraft and bow user Emily, and Magecraft and throwing knife user Bia.

It seems like in the Magecraft Academy, each of them was only assessed by their Magecraft and ended up being labeled as useless, but being able to handle arrows and throwing knives well made them rise up until they became C Rank Adventurers. It seems like the fact that the school’s assessment doesn’t always coincide with society’s assessment is the same even here.

The next party is “Eastern Tempest”. They’re a D Rank party like us, having three party members. The wind-related party name and the part where they’re all men end up reminding me of “Gale Viper”, but unlike them, these guys seem like good people.

The leader Hang is a twin sword user, and seems to come from the same village as the shield-bearer Ning and the bow user Tung. You may have noticed from the flow of the conversation, but parties are fundamentally formed by people from the same hometown, people from the same school and people who happen to meet somewhere, decided to work together and became adventurers. Those kinds of things seem to happen naturally.

There are also a few people like Urania and I who start out alone, but sooner or later they either join someone’s party or end up dying in the wild. And even when they join an existing party, they chose parties with people from the same village or school, parties they have some sort of connection with. Well, it is better to join a party that you can connect with rather than some unknown party, right?

Furthermore, most parties generally have a tank and an archer. That’s because monsters are generally tough. Beating them by slashing right in front with a sword is good and all, but most adventurers will probably die when attempting to do that. That’s why the role of a tank is really important. They’ll pin the monster down while the damage dealers whittle out its stamina.

Meanwhile, the archer will position himself somewhere he can watch over the whole battle. It seems that there are a lot of cases where the leaders are archers.

「Well, we’re just riding along with our leader’s naïve dream, so our leader’s naturally Hang–, you see.」
「Wai-, Stop talking about that!」
「Naïve Dream?」
「Yeah. Hey, tell them about it, leader!」

Saying that, Ning and Tung poke fun at Hang. It seems like all of the parties, including “Grim March” really like their leaders. There were also some parties that had a business-like relationship, but they really don’t seem to be on bad terms.

After all the parties finished introducing themselves, our self-introductions also ended safely. Being a two-person party, Urania and I don’t really have a leader, so we just ended with our individual self-introductions. However, it seems like that’s not good.

「Having a relationship of equal terms is important. Still, having a leader is different from that.」
「What do you mean?」

「I also ended up acting as the party’s leader, but that’s just my role. No matter what we do, there are always times where we adventurers face the danger of losing our lives. In those times, there’s the choice of fighting against it or running. Making that final decision is the role of the leader. It’s not necessarily true that you’ll always agree with each other. Both of you should at least decide on who will make the decision in times like those. And then after that, you can talk about whether what you’ve done was right or wrong. After all, the monsters aren’t going to wait for the two of you to reach an agreement, right?」

Grimhart said so. Though he added that it’ll also depend on the situation as well. It’s true that up until now we always talk it out whenever we decide on something, but we never had anyone to make urgent instructions in emergencies. It seems like this may be something Urania and I need to talk about after the mock battle, huh.