When I was a kid, I used to love this story called Warrior Urashima and the Seven Giant Turtles. I’d read the book so much the ink started to fade. Now, after returning to Freelea for the first time in a few months, I understood how Urashima must have felt after coming out of the Ryuuguu dungeon for the first time in decades and marveling at how the world had changed.
Did I accidentally come to the wrong city? I rubbed my eyes, but the scenery before me remained unchanged. And why’s the Guild so busy? It doesn’t look like there was an emergency summons.
Freelea was known as the city of adventurers because of how many adventurers used it as a base of operations. The Guild tended to be busy most days, but today it was exceptionally crowded. The building was packed to the brim. Me and my mates were used to rough work, but even we flinched at the prospect of wading into that crowd.
I recognize a few faces here and there, but how come there’s so many newcomers here?!
Adventurers were a free-spirited lot. They came in all kinds from all sorts of backgrounds, but at the same time, there weren’t a huge number of them. If you spent a decent amount of time in a city you got to know all the other adventurers in it, or at the very least knew one person from each of the parties operating in that city. But I didn’t know even half the people in this crowd. Something weird was going on. Especially considering the average age of these adventurers.
Why are they all so young?
I’d heard that a bunch of people had signed up to become adventurers after hearing the goddess’s oracle, but even so these numbers were abnormal. There were more youngsters in the Guild than I’d ever seen in my life, and furthermore their eyes all seemed to be glowing with hope.
As I stood stunned outside the front door, another group strode past me and walked inside.
“Oh shit, the Pretty Cats are back, guys!” someone yelled as the new group entered the building.
I turned to the newcomers and my shock doubled. Those guys are still kids!
The party of girls that had walked into the Adventurers’ Guild were holding up a bunch of items that the Guild had presumably requested. The surprising thing though was that they couldn’t have been any older than thirteen. Young adventurers weren’t a new sight, but I’d never seen adventurers quite this young.
What the heck happened to this city?!
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It had all started when we’d received a letter while staying in the small village we used as our forward base. Our party, the Hounds, was a special group of adventurers who went out and investigated unexplored regions of the world. We had our martial-minded but surprisingly humorous monk, Baltore Gold; our timid but reliable shielder, Geeko Walsh; and me, the party’s Scout and leader, Dax Find.
There were only three of us even though the recommended party size for people going through unexplored regions was six. We’d achieved exemplary results over and over, however, and our party was already A-rank. The problem was, the farther you got from human settlements, the stronger the monsters got. The dungeons around Freelea were much too easy for veteran A-rank adventurers like us.
Hence why we’d struck out into the unknown to find new dungeons no one had discovered yet. As a result, we’d come to be known as the Special Scouting Team of Freelea’s Adventurers’ Guild. However, even if we spent most of our time touring the unexplored frontiers, we had to go back to civilization every now and then—no matter how much you stuffed your Inventory before an expedition, you always ran out of something or the other after some time passed, and every once in a while you needed time to rest and recover after weeks in the wilderness.
We tended to go back to the nearest village once or twice a month to resupply and take a break, so anyone who wanted to reach us usually sent a letter to that village. And this time when we’d returned, the letter waiting for us turned out to be far more important than we’d realized.
It had been sent by Old Man Eld. He’d been our mentor when we’d been brats just starting out as adventurers, and he was also Freelea’s Guild Master. Though according to the letter we’d just gotten, it seemed he’d retired and Veteram had stepped up to take over his duties.
Are you serious...?
Needless to say, the three of us were shocked when we read the letter. Not because Veteram had become Guild Master, though. We were familiar with Veteram, since he was quite famous in Freelea. Plus, we knew that Eld had actually been asking Veteram to take over for him for a while now.
Honestly, we’d also thought Veteram would make for a suitable successor. As adventurers we were about as skilled as Veteram, but we lacked the charisma he did. That man drew people to him in a way we never could. Besides, he was the kind of person who gave it his all not for himself, but for the sake of others. He was a far cry from us brats who’d only gotten stronger for ourselves.
Still, it’s too soon.
While we had no qualms with Veteram being the next Guild Master, the thing that bothered us was why he’d succeeded the position now of all times. Eld was old, no doubt, but he was healthy enough that he could easily keep going for another 20 years if he wanted to. More importantly, Veteram himself had said he would rather stay an active adventurer for another decade or so. That was in fact why he’d initially rejected Eld’s request to succeed him.
If Veteram had retired from adventuring, then something serious must have happened. Either he’d gotten injured so badly he couldn’t keep adventuring, or something unexpected had happened to Eld or the city that had led to Veteram taking up the post earlier than intended.
However, Eld’s letter made no mention of why he’d retired. Instead he’d written: “The world has changed greatly. You should return to Freelea; I promise you won’t regret it!”
His handwriting had been as steady as always, proving that he was still as energetic as he used to be. And so we’d made our way back to Freelea, more confused than worried really.
❈❈❈
I know you said the world had changed, but this is too much change! I thought to myself as I stared at the completely transformed Guild building.
It had been only been a few months since we’d last been in Freelea, but Eld had greeted us with a smile at the front gates, looking more lively than ever now that he’d been freed from the burdens and responsibilities of being Guild Master. We’d asked him repeatedly what he’d meant in his letter, but he’d just grinned and said nothing. The whole time he’d just asked us about what we’d been up to, until we’d gotten fed up and demanded he let us know what was going on. To which he’d replied, “It’ll be faster if you guys see it for yourselves. Go check out the Adventurers’ Guild.”
“What the heck happened?” I muttered.
The city streets had seemed normal enough. Freelea had been bustling like usual, and we’d let the nostalgia of human civilization sink in for a while as we’d leisurely made our way to the Guild. The only difference from the Freelea we’d remembered was that there had been cloth-covered barrels set up on every street corner, but we’d figured that was just preparations for a festival of some sort or the other. Honestly, our steps had started to grow heavy with how similar Freelea seemed.