It was early afternoon; three days had passed since Tigaro’s welcome party. After enjoying a meal out together, Oltea, Frieze, and I parted ways with Tigaro and headed to the guild to pick up a request.
Upon arrival, I went to the reception window without delay. When the receptionist noticed me approaching, she greeted me with a bright, cheerful voice.
“Welcome back, Mr. Kaito. I’ve been expecting you! I have an important announcement to share with you!”
“An important announcement?”
“Correct. It concerns your promotion to rank A!”
“Oh, you finally made rank A!” Frieze said.
“That’s amazing, Kaito! That’s the absolute apex for an adventurer!” Oltea said. The two of them were excitedly shaking me by the shoulders while they praised my accomplishment, but truth be told, I didn’t feel much like I’d achieved anything. If anything, I had just satisfied my desire to fire beams.
Even so, I was pleased to be celebrated by my friends like that. I thanked each of them and turned back to face the receptionist.
“So, is there a promotion test for this rank too?” I said. As soon as the question left my mouth, Frieze and Oltea’s enthusiasm dampened. Uncertain expressions spread across their faces to replace the overflowing joy that had been there but a moment prior.
“Oh, right... There’s a test, huh?”
“The A rank promotional exam is almost definitely something terrible too...”
The promotional exam for rank B had tasked us with completing a contract to slay the ophidian, a danger level B monster. If the pattern held true, then the next test would have us killing an A level monster.
When one spoke of an A level monster, things like Vlad came to mind, and Vlad had manipulated the minds of countless adventurers in an attempt to take over the entire country... Oltea and Frieze’s fear was only natural if we were going to have to face another foe of that caliber. Even I wouldn’t be able to treat the challenge lightly.
The receptionist fished around in her cabinet for a while before withdrawing a paper, which she handed to me, saying, “First, take a look at this.” It was a monster hunt bulletin reading “Devil Flies.” The insects depicted resembled ordinary flies but with the addition of large mandibles like those of a stag beetle. Beneath the rendition was information pertaining to the monster’s danger level, reward, and so on. But this was...
“Is this the right one?” Oltea voiced the question on both of our minds before I was able to.
Frieze, too, nodded and pointed at the bill. “It says here that the monster is...danger level C.”
“It’s as you say: this bulletin is for rank C adventurers. I don’t believe Mr. Kaito has ever taken a request to slay devil flies in the past, so please allow me to begin by first explaining a bit about these monsters,” the receptionist said. While I listened to her, the words of the King returned to me.
On the day of the Spirit Festival, when I was visiting the castle, the King had told me about the stampede: a destructive phenomenon so powerful that in just one night, its advance had reduced an entire town to rubble. Not one inhabitant had survived. The sovereign had explained to me that the stampede’s true form was a mass migration of devil flies, but...
“Does the promotional exam have anything to do with the stampede?” I asked. As soon as I did, Oltea and Frieze screamed.
“The stampede?! That stampede?!”
“You don’t mean that...there are devil flies inside the royal capital?”
Their shouting rang out through the guildhall, drawing the attention of the other adventurers inside and causing a stir among them. In an instant, dread and fear began to spread through the building. The whole place was on the verge of panic. People began to fall from their chairs as they scrambled to flee the cafeteria.
The receptionist raised her voice in a mad rush to contain them.
“No, no, it isn’t true! No stampede has started! If we’d gotten word of any such thing, I wouldn’t even be here right now! I wouldn’t just be casually going about my reception work!” she shouted in order to calm the crowd down. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Her words had a persuasive power, and soon, the people in the guildhall calmed down and returned to whatever they’d previously been occupied by.
The receptionist sighed. “Well, that was a chilling experience... If even one person had made it out of the guildhall, the entire city would have descended into a panic...”
“I’m sorry. I feel ashamed...” Oltea said.
“Oh no, please don’t. I wasn’t blaming you at all—”
“B-But... I’m sorry to seem like I’m doubting you, but is it really true that the stampede isn’t breaking out? I know the capital isn’t in danger, but it’s not...coming down on other towns, is it?” Oltea asked. She wasn’t originally from the royal capital. Perhaps she was worried that her hometown was at risk.
As if trying to ease her anxieties, the receptionist smiled and laughed at the question. “There’s no need to worry. There’s been no word of anything like that,” she said. It wasn’t quite a phone, but this world was equipped with its own means of communicating over long distances. Using devil stones with the power to communicate telepathically through magic, conversations akin to those held over telephones were possible within a certain range.
In the case of a monster attack or the like, emergency messages could be sent from town to town in a chain, extending the range information could travel. If a mass migration of devil flies had been confirmed anywhere, a report would surely have arrived immediately.
“That’s good... So the stampede isn’t happening after all...”
“But in that case, why are we talking about devil flies?” I asked.
“Because this promotional examination is called the ‘Deep Forest Investigation.’”
“As in the dense woods on the national border?” I asked, remembering what the King had said about ten thousand devil flies gathering in the woods around there. The receptionist nodded.
“Word is that back in the day, it was a massive woodland region, expansive enough to stretch far beyond the horizon. These past thirty years, though, nature in the area has been disappearing more and more. It has been observed that when the devil flies finish consuming all of the plants and animals in a region, they migrate to a new feeding ground,” she said.
It would be fine if they moved to another place detached from human civilization, but in the worst-case scenario, the swarm would fall upon an inhabited area. What concerned me was exactly when the next mass migration would occur.
“So wait, has the forest already been all eaten up...?” Oltea asked.