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※Perla’s Perspective

My name is Perla. I’m a Lesser Water Sorcerer currently working as a Hunter and I’ve formed a party with two of my close friends back at home, Teren and Ilda. We previously had one more member but because of his excessive oppression, the three of us left and formed a brand new party. In the past, while he was pretty mischievous, he still apologized when he did something bad; but after being granted a high-ranked Job, he gradually changed.

Changing the topic, I have a teacher.

My teacher is a girl that formed a one-off party with us so that we can experience a D-rank request, since we will be allowed to become D-rank Hunters soon. Her name is Cielmer. Just from first glance, she looks younger than 10 years old and has white hair and blue, slightly upturned eyes. I hear that she’s actually 10 years old, but she’s quite thin when considering that. Her skin doesn’t have a single blemish, it would probably feel smooth to the touch. Her white hair isn’t the dry type too, it’s really smooth, or rather really flowy. She’s a pretty and adorable doll-like girl.

Teacher almost seems like a noble, but I didn’t ask much about her story. After all, she’s a hunter at just 10 years old, so I imagine that there must be a good reason for that. Everything about my teacher is already odd, but her capabilities with sorcery is exceptional as well. I’m probably nowhere near her. In the first place, it’s thanks to my teacher that I now have a role in our party.

When speaking of sorcery, it’s common to think about high-power sorcery that clean up monsters from the backline, but since I can only use low-ranked water sorcery, I can’t use powerful spells like that. Because of that, I was thinking of myself as a burden; but after Teacher told me to focus on supporting the party and after seeing her do it in practice, I was able to have enough confidence to think that even I can be helpful to the party.

◇

Before I noticed it, half a month has already been passed since we partied with Teacher. We stopped by the Hunter’s Guild to accept a request, as we usually do, when our former party member Brass appeared before us. While the three of us were cautious, wondering what reason he had to meet us after everything that happened, Brass began speaking with the same casualness that he always had.

「You don’t have enough firepower, do you? I’ll be your ace again.」
「Declined.」

Teren only returns a short reply, and both Ilda and I think the same way. Probably not expecting a refusal, Brass was left wide-eyed, but he immediately lost his temper.

「You don’t have any right to decline. Anyway, party up with me.」
「Declined.」
「You don’t get it? I’m only saying this out of concern.」
「If you’re so concerned, you want to try fighting?」
「Okay, okay. If we’re doing this, I can take on all of you, you know? You’re all just E-ranked hunters anyway. But if I win, half of the request reward goes to me. If you’re fine with that, I’ll fight you.」
「Fine then.」

Amidst our argument inside the guild, which drew unwanted attention from others, we eventually agreed to settle the dispute through a mock battle. We sought the assistance of guild staff and secured permission to use the training grounds. While it was my first time engaging in a face-off, I knew that utilizing the training grounds and personnel came with a cost. I learned that in the event of a loss, the loser is responsible for covering the expenses, and in some cases, if one bets all their belongings, the debt will be taken out of their future earnings.

「I continued to complete high difficulty E-rank requests while carrying some dead weight, and I was even willing to team up with you guys who were barely surviving E-rank. Weren’t you all being foolish? By parting ways with you all, I gained true strength. I am confident that I will become a high-ranking hunter in no time. You’ll see.」

Right now, what did Brass just say? Did he just say “some dead weight”? As far as I know, the only people Brass has partied with other than us, is Teacher. If Teacher is really “some dead weight”, then Brass should be able to successfully complete D-rank requests solo by now. Taken aback, Teren and Ilda scoffed at what Brass said but my blood is absolutely boiling right now.

However, since Teren and Ilda were more obvious, Brass reacted to them.

「What’s with you? Are you mocking me?」
「If you’re really that strong, then why don’t you join other parties instead?」

Teren replied in retaliation, but probably knowing that it’s going to take forever at this rate, the guild staff cut in between the conversation, 「We will be confirming the details.」

「Yes.」 Teren answered and backed down, but having lost the chance to rebuke Teren, Brass angrily glared at the staff.

「If Brass wins, on top of joining the party, he will earn the right to half of the request reward the party will receive upon its completion. This will continue until the dissolution of the party and if ever the party is dissolved, it will be forbidden for the four of you present here to form another party with each other.」

The exact details has been slightly changed, but it was probably unavoidable. If after forming a party, we immediately break up and form another party without Brass again, this fight would then become meaningless after all. The guild staff looked at Teren and asked, 「And what would happen if your party wins?」

Come to think of it, we still haven’t decided on that. Still, there’s not a single thing I would want, or anything we could get from Brass. As Teren was looking at me, I only shook my head in reply.

「Please don’t let him come in contact with us from tomorrow on.」
「Brass, will this be alright?」
「Sure.」
「This face-off will start on my signal and will end when the opposing party has been completely incapacitated, surrendered, or in the occasion that I stop the battle. Murder is unacceptable.」

As the explanation ended, we turned to face Brass who was also facing us. Upon hearing the 「Start!」 signal, Teren and Brass broke into a run. If it was the past Teren, he would wait for Brass to attack but now, he assertively charges in himself.

Although the two of them rushed in at the same time, Brass swung his sword faster. He made a really large swing, but as expected of someone with a high-ranked Job, though his swing was large, there were no wasted movements in his heavy blow. Teren gave up on avoiding and attempted to block with his shield but he ended up being knocked off the ground. To follow it up, Brass was about to take a step forward.

However, with it being so easy to read, even I can easily respond to his actions. Utilizing the spell I had prepared, I created a small puddle on the ground beneath Brass’ feet. As a result, the ground became muddy, and the force of his step caused Brass to trip and fall.

After being knocked to the ground, Brass quickly got back up and glared at me. His ability to recover was impressive compared to the monsters we faced outside. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was okay for him to keep staring at me like that. If Ilda or Teren attacked him at that moment, it might have ended the fight.

I had already noticed before that Brass wasn’t truly strong. While he was physically powerful and capable of knocking out members of our backline with a single blow, his intentions were obvious from the expression on his face and the way he moved. He wasn’t even attempting to deceive us. If Teren had calmly dealt with his initial attack, he probably could have avoided it without any issue. It was something I should have taken care of.

This time, Teren signaled us to practice teamwork with this enemy. It wasn’t too long ago when we followed Teacher’s advice and changed our fighting style, which proved useful in our fight against the Goblin Leader.

As Brass was about to run my way, I tripped him again, and signaled back to Teren in acknowledgement.

◇

「S̲h̲i̲t̲!」

Brass cursed and threw his sword to the ground. After tripping on water multiple times, Brass is all muddy and probably has small scratches all over his body. I ended up overdoing it since he made fun of Teacher, but it was an awfully great practice for me. While it was difficult to figure out the timing since he moves quickly, it was easy to support the others since his movements were monotonous.

「End of the battle.」

The guild staff thought that Brass accepted his defeat, probably because he threw his sword, and announced the end of the fight. Brass had no objections too. Although he’s clearly displeased, he didn’t argue with the staff. Instead, he said 「You cold-hearted traitors!」 and berated us.

「What traitors?」
「You all don’t care even though my little sister is sick, do you? Even though we came from the same village, reaching this far together. Why do I have to lose to guys like you.」
「Why? Because you almost got us killed, that’s why.」
「Ha?」
「You don’t need to understand. Come to think of it, I had a gold coin on me when I left.」
「Hand it over.」
「That was the plan. Since I saved up one gold coin on me, that means you should’ve saved enough for two gold coins too. With that, you would’ve had three gold coins and been able to buy the medicine. But instead, you didn’t.」
「What’s wrong with me sending letters to keep them from worrying.」

To be honest, the three of us had planned to pool our resources and give Brass one gold coin once we had saved up enough. However, during our discussion, we found out that Brass had been sending letters on his own. If it was just within a town or village, it wouldn’t be much of an issue, but sending letters to places further away could be quite expensive.

In those cases, it would require a request to be made to a D-rank hunter since only they and above have the freedom to move between towns. If the letter was to be sent to towns where hunters usually gathered, there were times when requests for copper coins would be accepted just to earn some spare change. However, our village was different. It would require about two to three silver coins for the delivery.

「There’s nothing wrong with sending letters and as long as you use your own money for that, it’s not an issue. But it’s different in this case, isn’t it? You were just being a show-off. If you really wanted to cure her illness, shouldn’t you have saved the money you used for sending letters to buy her medicine as early as possible?」
「Since our families would get worried if we didn’t contact them at all, we promised to all chip in and send letters together once every year, didn’t we? So, why did you keep quiet about regularly sending letters then?」

Ilda and I questioned Brass as well, but he only clicked his tongue in reply. Moreover, I guess he couldn’t endure this situation anymore as he smacked the ground while muttering 「Ahhh, geez!」 and left the place. From now on, we’re not related to Brass anymore. It didn’t make me feel any better, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference no matter how long we tolerated him.

Still, I haven’t forgiven him for insulting Teacher. Maybe I should’ve tripped him up a bit more.

Heya~! Our hero Brass, the Advanced Swordsman capable of pulling dead weight as he rushes against the strong boss monsters, has given us the honor of seeing his visage once more! Also, he got messed up, the fool. Serves him right.

Btw, for the calculation of the gold coin, remember that there’s a share for *both* Brass and his sister. The party divided the share into 5, including a share for the little sister. In short, by the time they all have one gold coin saved up, Brass should have twice the amount. Just a reminder since I forgot, lol.

Anyway, today was a bit different from the usual, an interlude! It was nice to a different point of view. As usual. Still, you can see how desperate Brass was and yet it still didn’t fix his attitude. The party of three, on the other hand, is really doing well for themselves, and only treated the battle as a practice, lol.

Speaking of battle, I’ve decided to change the terms a bit. I translated it as “Mock Battle” before, which is not wrong, but from the nuance it’s much closer to a duel. However, duels are one-on-one battles, so I was reluctant to use the term duel. However, again, I’ve asked other people for similar terms and managed to get: Face-off, Formal battle, Formal match. I’ve used face-off for now but I’d like to get input on which one is better to read. Please feel free to vote here .

Speaking of translations, do you know that Sanowa might be referring to a place in France called Sannois, as Sanowa is how it’s referred to in Japanese? Geez, I need to do better with this translation thing. So yeah, as for this I’ve decided to use Sannois instead.

Now then, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please feel free to comment. Stay clean, stay safe, and have a nice day~!