I rubbed my smarting cheek as I stepped into the living room...and found Willem seated within, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
Eeek! S-Someone sure looks like they’re in a really, really bad mood, huh?
“Uhh, h-hey! We’re back,” I said.
“Seems you had an awfully fun day today, didn’t you?” Willem replied in a voice so low and rumbling, it almost felt like an earthquake had struck.
“Well, we, umm, just popped out for a quick hunt, that’s all,” I stammered. I did leave a note for him and everything, didn’t I...?
“Oh, I’m well aware,” Willem said. “I read your note! I also happen to remember the part where you promised you were going to stay here all day. That ring any bells?”
“Yeah, umm, the thing is, my familiars...” I began. I hadn’t wanted to go out hunting in the first place, and I’d told them no, but it was no use. I looked behind me, hoping that they’d take responsibility for the idea...
Huh? Wait, where’d they go? They were right behind me just a second ago!
I glanced around the room and quickly spotted all four of my familiars lounging over in a corner. They’d wasted no time abandoning me to deal with the guildmaster’s lecture on my own. For crying out loud, guys!
“I hope you’re not about to blame your familiars, are you?” Willem said. “You know that curbing their impulses is your whole job, right?”
Ugh! He was right, and I knew it—except for the part where he made it sound like that would be easy. Curbing a fenrir’s and an ancient dragon’s impulses is actually a pretty tall order! How exactly do you expect me to stop them when they refuse to see reason? I really wanted to defend myself, but I knew that trying would only extend the lecture, so I held my tongue.
“I swear, I take my eyes off of you for a second and you up and vanish on me, every single time,” Willem grumbled.
Please don’t give me that look. You’re making it seem like I’m the troublemaker here! Glare at my familiars instead!
“And let’s not forget about what’s going on with the leviathan! Do you have any idea how much work is going into butchering that thing? Is it too much to ask that you sit quietly and not cause trouble at least until the preparations are all done?”
I couldn’t agree more. I would’ve loved to spend that whole time taking it easy, honestly...
“Listen up, Mukohda. You might not be what people expect when they picture an S-ranked adventurer, but you are as high up in the ranks as you can get in the guild, and it’s about time you started acting like it! That means...”
And then Willem lectured me for a literal hour.
“Got it? I’m begging you, Mukohda, please don’t cause any more trouble for a while!”
“Okaaay,” I weakly droned. I’d already been exhausted from the hunting trip, and now I was practically ready to pass out on the spot.
“I guess I should ask, though—what exactly did you hunt?” Willem added as an afterthought.
“Oh! Uhhh, dragon turtles,” I said.
Willem looked like he’d just bitten directly into a lemon. He raised a hand to his face, rubbing his temples. “Run that by me again?”
“I said dragon turtles.”
Willem let out a very long, very deep sigh. “It’s always something with you, isn’t it?” he groaned. “I’m sure even you would know better, but just in case—you weren’t planning on bringing those to the Adventurer’s guild here, were you?”
“Huh? Wait, would that be a bad idea?”
My familiars had been talking about how they were almost as excited about sampling the dragon turtles as they were about eating the leviathan, so I’d been planning on asking if the guild could butcher the turtles right away. Turtle meat wasn’t exactly an all-purpose cut that I could serve every single day, but I’d been looking forward to having a big stock of surplus meat that I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of anytime soon.
“A bad idea? A bad idea?! It’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” Willem bellowed. “You have the whole guild working overtime to butcher a leviathan, and now you’re planning on dumping a dragon turtle on them before they’re even done preparing?! Are you trying to work the whole capital branch to death?!”
I flinched back in the face of Willem’s fury. “Are, umm, are dragon turtles...?”
“S-ranked monsters! It’s been fifteen years since anyone’s killed one!”
Yup. S-ranked. Kinda saw that coming, considering how big they were and how Fel and Gon were talking about them. “Fifteen years? Really?” I asked.
“Really,” Willem confirmed. “I’d know, seeing as I was in the party that took it down.”
“Wait, you were?”
“Better believe it. That’s how I ended up getting promoted to guildmaster in the first place. Me and the rest of my party all used the windfall we got from that thing to retire from active duty.”
Willem explained that the toughness of a dragon turtle’s shell made it a very valuable material. They could be fashioned into swords, spears, shields, and armor as well, and that versatility meant that they sold for a high price. That wasn’t hard to believe, after I had seen how hard they were with my own eyes. It was easy to imagine a shell like that being a dream material—but I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to take advantage of its impressive properties.
“So, what if the turtle’s shell ends up pretty badly damaged? Because ours got kinda beat up. I’m guessing that means they wouldn’t be worth as much?” I asked. Generally speaking, the more damaged such materials were, the less useful and valuable they would be.
“Wait, wait— You damaged a dragon turtle shell? How is that even possible?” Willem asked. “We fought ours head-on, and we couldn’t even put a dent in its shell!”
It seemed that the conventional strategy for dealing with a dragon turtle was to use magic—fire magic being particularly effective—to heat the areas of the shell that the turtle tucked its limbs into. Eventually, the turtle would get fed up with enduring the heat and emerge from its shell to go on the attack, allowing a party to get a few hits in as well. Repeating that process over and over would allow you to gradually whittle the dragon turtle down. Supposedly, his party had taken a full two days to finish theirs off.
Huh! I guess that would be how a normal party would have to handle it, considering how crazy tough those shells were. A normal party...
“Yeah, but the thing is, my familiars were the ones doing the fighting,” I explained.
Willem hung his head. “I don’t even know why I bothered explaining conventional tactics to you,” he muttered.
You’re not wrong, but it’s still not my fault! There’s nothing conventional about us, period.
“Anyway,” Willem said after yet another sigh, “we’ll take it off your hands once you get back to Karelina. Just be patient until then.”
“Understood,” I replied. “Oh, but you should know that I actually have three of them. That’s not an issue, is it?”
“Wait. Y-You hunted three dragon turtles?!”
“Yeah. One of their shells got split open, though, and another was pretty much totally shattered.”
“Split open...? Shattered...?” Willem mumbled as he clutched his head. “Agggh, no! I’m not thinking about this right now! It can wait till we’re back in Karelina! We’ll talk once I’ve seen them for myself!”
“A-All right, then.”
“Anyway! As long as you’re in the capital, you have to be on your best behavior! No more trouble! Please, Mukohda!” Willem begged, grabbing me by the shoulders as he spoke. I nodded frantically.
From that point on, we did as Willem asked and behaved ourselves...more or less. All sorts of rare and interesting goods flowed through the capital, and since we were here anyway, it would’ve felt like a waste to not do some shopping, so I ended up spending several days wandering around the markets and checking out anything and everything that caught my attention.
My familiars griped the whole time, but I actually had a blast! The capital was everything it was hyped up to be, especially when it came to tea. I was able to find a ton of varieties that you couldn’t get in Karelina. I picked a few up, naturally, and got a kick out of taste testing all the interesting new types I’d found.
In one of the stores I visited while I was going around sampling new tea varieties, I discovered that their signature product was honey from Opatrný, a region that had recently managed to start producing the stuff on a commercial scale. The shopkeeper put some real effort into selling me on the honey, and I figured I’d probably be able to use it in my cooking at some point, so I ended up buying some on impulse. It was pretty expensive as far as impulse purchases go, but sometimes you just have to splurge.
I immediately took the honey back to the mansion and whipped up some pancakes for everyone to try it on. It ended up being incredibly delicious—as good as honey could get, in terms of both flavor and aroma. I came out of that meal a huge fan of the stuff, and my familiars liked it quite a bit as well. Sui, who adored sweets, was particularly entranced, and before I knew it, I’d used up the whole jar. I couldn’t let that be a onetime experience, so I went right back to the store the next day and really stocked up. It cost a small fortune, but considering how good the honey was, I knew that it’d be worth every coin I spent on it.
I also bought a few other things while I was in the capital, including souvenirs for everyone back home in Karelina. I whiled away the days in commercial bliss, until finally...
“The time has finally come. Tomorrow is the day.”
“Indeed! At long last, the hour draws near!”
《Just a little longer, and we’ll finally get to chow down on leviathan meat!》
《Leviathaaan!》
This was it. Tomorrow would mark ten days since the preparations began.
“The guild’s already reached out, and said they’ll be counting on you for your barriers and security,” I reported.
“But of course. It shall be done,” Fel said.
“Yes, indeed!” Gon agreed.
Tomorrow, the leviathan would finally be butchered. There was just one little problem that we still had to deal with...
“Sounds like he’s already somewhere in the capital too,” I sighed, staring off into the distance as thoughts of the most obnoxious dragon lover in the whole country drifted through my mind.