That morning, the sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains woke me. I slipped out of bed and gently shook Teto awake.
“Teto... ’S morning,” I mumbled sleepily.
“Good morning, Lady Witch,” she said with a yawn.
The two of us took turns washing our faces, and when we were done, we started preparing breakfast.
“I’m thinking toast, ham, fried eggs, and a salad for breakfast. Is that okay with you?” I asked Teto.
“Teto would like to eat some of the cheese we bought a few days ago,” she said.
“Sure. Let’s go for cheesy scrambled eggs instead of sunny-side up, then.”
When we were done eating breakfast, we got dressed for the day. I put on my usual outfit, complete with my trusty hooded robe.
“Makeover!” I chanted, casting my transformation spell on myself. “All right, we’re good to go.”
I hopped down from the caravan and looked up at the bright blue sky overhead.
“It’s already been a year, huh?” I muttered.
Our horse golem peeked at me from its spot in the simple stable I had built with my magic, and I gave it a pat on the head before making for the adventurer’s guild.
I had made the stable after Teto and I’d decided to make Liefe our temporary base. We couldn’t just leave our caravan in the adventurer’s guild parking area forever, after all, so I rented an empty plot of land from the guild and moved our carriage there. We spent the past year gathering information about the other regions of the Sunfield Empire, all while clearing quests for the guild. Then we’d use the intel we’d gathered to go on little expeditions around the empire and come back to Liefe when we were done.
We’d forced our way through a forest teeming with monsters to go see some ancient ruins, spent time in the old capital to visit the empire’s biggest library and read through their entire collection, traveled to a village that made glass beads after they caught my eyes in Liefe... We also had a few dream oracles from Liriel and the other goddesses, and occasionally used our transfer gates to head back to the forest and check on the others.
The receptionist, whom we had grown quite close with, greeted us when we entered the guild.
“Ah, Miss Chise! Miss Teto! Welcome back. When did you two return to Liefe?”
“Hi, it’s been a while. We arrived yesterday.”
“Hi! We brought you souvenirs!” Teto chirped, handing her her gift.
We had just come back from an excursion into a dungeon, per Teto’s request. It took us two months, but we reached the bottom of the dungeon and found quite a lot of treasure on our way. I only sold loot from monsters C-rank and below to the guild, though, just to be safe. As for the higher-ranked loot and items, I brought them back to the forest and had Beretta deal with them.
“You two went to explore a dungeon, right?” the receptionist said. “If you still have some loot, we’d happily buy it from you,” she added, looking at us expectantly.
A small smile curled on my lips. “We did keep some of the loot to sell here.”
Her face lit up. “Thank you so much! Let me go grab the reference list for that dungeon’s loot.”
We watched with amused smiles as she ran to a room at the back of the guild. She scrambled back with the list in question, and we moved to the exchange counter, where we started taking the loot out of our magic bag and cross-referencing it with the items on the list. I noticed that the price at which they’d buy the loot from us was slightly higher than it had been at the guild near the dungeon—perhaps to cover for the extra fees we might’ve encountered while transporting everything back to Liefe.
“Can you please calculate how much that’ll be?” the receptionist asked the guild member who’d shown us to the stables the first time we had arrived in town.
“Sure thing. Ever since you two arrived in Liefe, we’ve been getting a steady supply of loot. Thanks a bunch,” the man said with a satisfied smile as he carried our haul to another desk.
I decided to ask the receptionist about quests while we waited for him to wrap up calculating how much they owed us.
“Can we take a look at the quests you’ve got posted?”
“We’ll clear the quests that no one wants!” Teto said.
“Sorry, we currently don’t have anything for you,” the receptionist said. She took out a notebook and showed us the quests up to C-rank that the guild had left. Most of them were either routine tasks or escort missions, which were usually pretty long and annoying.
“This is all we have left after this morning.”
“Yeah, we can’t really take on any of these...”
Options were always thin on the ground after the morning quest rush. While we didn’t mind doing easy routine quests, we always made sure to only take the ones that had been left untouched for a while, so as not to steal jobs from apprentice adventurers. None of these seemed to fall into that category, though, so there really was nothing for us to do.
As Teto and I exchanged troubled glances, the receptionist flashed us a smile.
“How about you two take on the B-rank promotion exam soon? You’ve already met all of the conditions to get promoted, and it’ll give you more quest options,” she suggested.
I let out a long hum. “We’re not particularly strapped for money or anything, though,” I said, an awkward smile curling on my lips.
“It’s a shame, though! You two could definitely become famous adventurers if you put your mind to it,” the receptionist said excitedly before reciting the names of some of history’s most well-known adventurers...including “the Witch of Creation”—yours truly.
My smile grew even more awkward.
“You really like adventurers, don’t you?” I said to change the topic.
“Your eyes are all sparkly!” Teto added.
“I love adventurer stories!” the receptionist confirmed with a proud expression. “Ever since I was a kid, my favorite thing to do in the whole world has been to go eat at taverns and listen to the minstrels sing the tales of history’s greatest heroes! That’s why I decided to start working at the guild—to hear adventurers’ stories firsthand!”
I couldn’t help being impressed by her enthusiasm.
“Speaking of which, have you read The Legend of the Heroes?” I asked. “It’s an adventuring novel that just came out, and it’s pretty good.”
“You’ve read it too?! I’ve been reading the third volume over and over again since it came out!”
I’d had no idea that the series was already on its third volume. Leave it to a die-hard fan to keep you abreast of any franchise’s bleeding edge, I suppose. She was about to launch into a passionate discussion about the series, but the guild member standing behind her cleared his throat.