Damn it...
I was glad we had made it in time, but I had accidentally forced Silica to suddenly cast a spell—a big one. It must have heavily depleted her MP.
“Silica, are you all right?”
“Yes, I can keep going.” She really was an S-rank adventurer. Her MP exceeded my own. Normally, such a spell would be enough to completely wipe out a mage, but her skills rivaled Mia’s, the mage of the Hero’s party—or perhaps even exceeded them.
“Lloyd, what do we do?”
“Sorry, let me think.”
I couldn’t get a grasp on the situation until we arrived, so I hadn’t thought up a plan. Plus...
“Hey, I’ve been giving the orders, but isn’t that Daggers’s job?” I had just been hired, and I wasn’t an official member of this party. Wasn’t it wrong for me to command them?
“Huh? You’re asking that after all this time? You’re great at giving commands, and you know a lot about monsters. Plus, it was always our supporter, Crumb, who did that job anyway. It was never mine in the first place.”
“Huh...” I was only just realizing how little I knew about everyone. Really, the only thing I did know was that they were great adventurers, and that they were kind...
“Are you really okay with me taking charge?”
“Yeah, of course. No one’s going to object to that, right?” asked Daggers.
“Of course not! We’d have never made it this far without you, Lloyd,” said Yui.
“Yeah, she’s right.”
“I think so too. Please take good care of us!”
I was a bit troubled by those words, but if they trusted me, then I had to do it. I was getting paid, after all. “Got it. First, let’s avoid the monsters and meet up with the knights. I want to get a grasp on the situation.”
“Right. Do we engage with the monsters?”
“Avoid it as much as possible. Intel comes first.”
I had cast too many spells over the past few days, leaving my mana depleted. Silica was likely in the same boat. Plus, Cross had used up a lot of his arrows to fight the high wolves. It’d be bad for us to rush into a fight. First, we needed to recover.
“Yui, Daggers, can you lead the way? We’re going to take the route with the least monsters.”
“All righty! Leave it to me!”
“Got it.”
Daggers and Yui took the helm, their weapons in hand. They routed the monsters that attacked us as we rushed to our destination. We made it near the knights in a flash. A unit of shields stood in a line, keeping the monsters at bay.
“Ack! That was close!” Yui, our line leader, suddenly leaped into the air.
“Yui, what are you—?” Oh. So that was it. Once I made it to where she had jumped, I noticed the giant moat. I hurried to leap as well and cleared the moat. “Huh, so that’s how they were fending off the horde.”
I wouldn’t have been able to make the jump without my buffs. That’s how big it was, and the sides and bottom were damp. Had they used water magic to widen the moat?
“Are you Sir Lloyd and the S-rank adventurers?” asked one of the knights who approached as soon as he realized our presence.
“We are. Can you explain the situation? I want to know our supply reserves, how many are in the fight, and... Where’s Allen?” I glanced around, but didn’t catch sight of the Hero’s party. Were they fighting elsewhere?
“The Hero...is absent. I believe he’s home.”
Home? That had to be the building constructed especially for the Hero and his party. “Why? Isn’t this an emergency request?”
Their participation in emergency requests was compulsory, which was only natural considering the funds and aid they received from the government. What were they doing at a time like this? “What happened? Is there a reason they couldn’t fight?”
“No, there was just a bit of a skirmish at the Adventurer’s Guild...”
“That’s his reason?”
“Y-Yes.”
Fury began to bubble up in my chest. A small skirmish? He had abandoned defending the city because of that? People’s lives were on the line! Was he afraid? No, that couldn’t be it.
But then, why had he even accepted the title of Hero in the first place? Not to mention, Allen had been publicly announcing that he was “the strongest hero” and that “the city was safe as long as I’m here!” He even promised to eradicate the demons. He wasn’t a child, so why...?
“Allen...”
“Sir Lloyd, they are no help to us now. Our only hope is you and the S-rank adventurers.”
I see... Wait. Huh? Why me?
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Both of us stared at each other, looking dumbfounded.
“I heard your skills are quite amazing, Sir Lloyd.”
“No, not at all. I’m just a third-rate white mage. I get having hope in Yui and her party, but...”
What was happening? I didn’t understand him at all. The Hero’s party had abandoned this emergency request, so why have hope in me, whom they had kicked out? I just didn’t get it.
“I was banished from the Hero’s party for being too weak.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
This discussion was going nowhere, and there was no time for that. “Whatever. Let’s talk about this later. What’s the current situation?”
“Um, well...”
The knight explained as follows: Currently, the knights and adventurers were fighting to keep the monsters out of town, but the situation didn’t look very good. They were even more wanting for numbers than supplies. The lower-ranked adventurers had already dropped out of the battle, meaning they had already lost plenty of manpower. At present, they were barely keeping the monsters from invading the city.
“Then, do you still have mana potions and arrows?”
“Yes, we do...”
But still, there were only fifty combatants left standing, and we were fighting ten thousand, about a hundred of them secretly buffed. Could we really win?
“What do we do...?” Learning of the situation only left me more distraught for an answer.
“Sir Lloyd, at this rate, we’ll...”
We faced complete despair.
That’s when the beastwoman on my back suddenly awoke.