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「Nh? Hey, isn’t that the Guild Master and Petra?」 (Lily)
「You’re right. I wonder why?」 (Urania)
「Aren’t they here to watch?」 (Lily)
「The Guild Master? Going out of his way just to watch the mock battles? Don’t really think he has that much free time, you know?」 (Hang)
「Well that is true.」 (Urania)

While watching two other parties going at each other, the Guild Master and Petra entered the Training Area. According to Hang, it seems like the mock battles, or rather the Training Area, is not a place the Guild Master usually frequent.

The Guild Master calls the leaders of “Grim” and “Fyne”, Grimhart and Audrey respectively, and started talking about something.

「A talk with two C Rank Parties? Is there an emergency or something?」 (Lily)
「Considering that, they don’t really seem panicked, though.」 (Urania)
「Yes. It’s not something of great urgency after all.」 (Petra)
「「Waa!?」」 (Lily & Urania)

That was scary. I didn’t notice that Petra, who should’ve had arrived together with the Guild Master, was already this close to us. Maybe because she got offended by our reactions or something, Petra’s puffing her cheeks a bit. Still, that really wasn’t our fault, you know?

「Uh… you need something from us?」 (Lily)
「Oh, right. We have a request for the “Little Fairies”.」 (Petra)
「Haa?」 (Urania)
「It’s a Designated Request from the Guild. I don’t mind if you see it as a Compulsory Request.」 (Petra)

Compulsory Requests. In situations of high urgency, these requests allow the Guild to forcefully leave a job to Adventurers. Adventurers registered in the Guild basically don’t have any right to refuse it. But, still……

「Why!?」 (Lily)
「!? What do you mean? It’s not of high urgency, right!?」 (Urania)

Exactly. This time, Petra herself denies that it’s an emergency. Even still, giving us a Compulsory Request when it’s not an emergency is clearly an abuse of the Guild’s authority.

When the Guild starts using the Adventurers as they please, the Kingdom’s order will end up crumbling down. It’s because as war potential, Adventurers are more than enough to bring down an entire city.

That’s why there are various conditions needed for the Guild to publish a Compulsory Request. In nature, just proclaiming a Compulsory Request itself is simple. But after a Guild announces a Compulsory Request, there will be inspections coming from Guild Headquarters. Was the Compulsory Request really needed? Is the designated party appropriate for it? Was the reward reasonable? They’ll come to inspect the details and facts.

「Including those, Master has an explanation for it. Please follow me.」
「……」
「Lily, let’s go.」
「Urania……」
「Let’s hear them out. We’ll start there.」

With Urania prompting me so, I reluctantly follow behind Petra. It seems like the Guild Master is already done talking with both “Grim” and “Fyne”, it looks like they’re just waiting for us.

◆◇◆◇◆

「Let’s get straight to the point, the request this time is for an investigation.」
「「「Haa?」」」

It’s not only us; even “Grim” and “Fyne” were surprised. Normally, a Compulsory Request comes after the Guild’s private investigators examine incidents with high urgency, disasters and stuff, and thereafter the collected information is then used to choose the suitable Adventurers.

Despite that, this time he asked us for an investigation. This is obviously an unusual case.

「Ahh, it’s normal to be surprised, I guess. Well, I’ll explain first, leave the questions for later. This time’s investigation will be on the highway at the foot of the sacred mountain two days east of Motsi. “Grim” and Lily probably remembers this, but this is where a swarm of eighteen Goblins was found.
Fortunately, the goblins are already exterminated. Still, according to the Guild’s investigators, it looks like there’s a very high probability those Goblins were there trying to run away from something. What I want you to do is to investigate what exactly that 『something』 is. Does it really exist? If it does, how much of a threat is it? Is it possible to subjugate it? If subjugation is possible, you may consider it an extension of this request.
Ahh, also, eighteen frozen Goblin statues have been properly confirmed, so here’s the bonus reward. Take it, “Grim”.」

「What!?」

Saying that, the Guild Master chucks Grimhart a leather pouch; Grimhart catches the pouch……and wordlessly passes it to me.

「Huh?」
「This is something that Lily should have. We can’t accept this.」
「Nn~…… Then let’s split it equally, okay? I’m telling you in advance, don’t worry and just take it!」

I can understand how Grimhart feels, but it’s a bit awkward to just take the money. In the first place, concerning the Goblins, you could have just judged it as me, not even being an adventurer at the time, stealing the prey from them; and I’m pretty sure that if “Grim” hadn’t collected the Proof of Subjugation and reported it to the Guild, we would never receive any bonus reward.

That’s why this time I decided to have an equal split. It is quite a lot, so it’s plenty enough even if we split between six people.

「……Alright. This time I’ll just take it as a debt.」
「You don’t really need to do that, though…」
「Wha, wait wait, what are you talking about? 18 goblins, far from being D rank isn’t that already a C rank threat! You mean to say she and “Grim” managed to subjugate that!?」

Unable to hold it in, Bia of “Fyne” cuts into our conversation. It seems like the other members of “Fyne” feel the same way too, so “Grim” ended up talking about the time when we first met. Though the members of “Fyne” look like they aren’t totally convinced since they’ve also seen my Magecraft during the mock battle. It seems like they still harbored some doubts about me.

「Are you done? What will you now? Will you take it? Or will you decline?」
「Decline? We don’t really have much of a choice, do we?」
「Honestly speaking, yes.」
「Then we can only accept it, right?」
「Please do.」

In cases where you reject a Compulsory Request, the Guild will judge it as you having no more intention to continue working as an adventurer and your Guild Card will be revoked. That’s why in reality, we really can’t choose to reject it, giving us no other choice.

But, well, maybe since this time it’s just mainly investigation, it seems like everyone’s accepting it without any hesitation. With the nature of Compulsory requests, there’s always the looming danger of losing your life. But this time, if it’s impossible for just us to eliminate it, we’re allowed to escape. Furthermore, with the nature of the request, the reward for doing it is a lot higher than that of the standard requests and we also earn a lot of service points for the Guild, so it’s going to be a shortcut for Ranking Up too.

Honestly speaking, other than us being forced to do it, this request is pretty tasty. Of course, it’s not like I’m making light of that something that caused a swarm of goblins to run in fear, though.

「Alright, then we’ll be processing the acknowledgment of the requests. I’m hoping for a quick resolution.」
「Yep!」「Okay!」「Understood!」

And with our separate answers that were in no means any organized, we began discussing to prepare for our departure.