Using my scout skills I hid my presence, walked up behind the group, and peered over their shoulders.
“Manual Arts for Dummies? What kinda book is that?”
I spoke aloud, ruining my stealth. The adventurers, who’d obviously heard since I was right next to them, turned and gave me annoyed looks.
“Hey, don’t try and sneak a peek. We’ve been waiting all day for a chance to— Gah! It’s the Hounds!”
It seemed this party had at least heard of us. They jumped to their feet and one of them bowed to me. He then pushed the Manual Arts for Dummies book into my hand and ran off.
“M-My apologies, sir!”
That was the kind of reaction we usually got. Though we’d shifted our base of operations to one of the towns on the frontier, we were still A-rank adventurers. The name “Hounds” struck fear in the hearts of adventurers all over the world. But then I turned around and saw the Pretty Cats staring coldly at me.
“Ugh. I can’t believe you’re the kind of people to mug kids,” Ai said with a shake of her head.
“That’s not mugging, Ai, that’s called extortion! I read about this!” Mia replied.
“I hope you guys know this, but adults that bully kids are super lame,” Chisha added.
I couldn’t really argue back since ultimately, I had basically ended up threatening that kid to give the book to me.
These girls really know how to twist the knife!
I resolved to eventually get them back for all the abuse they’d piled on us, then cracked open Manual Arts for Dummies.
Man, when was the last time I even read a book? Well, whatever, I’ll just skim for a bit until they stop glaring at me.
But once I started reading, I was sucked in.
I was wondering what manual Arts were, but it’s that special way of activating Arts Chisha mentioned before!
As a hybrid scout-attacker, Arts made up the core of my skills. And now that I knew this book was a book on Arts, my interest was piqued. I couldn’t afford to just skim this book.
I see. So even if you don’t say the skill name, as long as you imbue your weapon with mana and...
The book was written in very simple language, probably because the author knew the primary audience would be adventurers. There was no complex vocabulary or sentence structures, and each page was punctuated with annotated illustrations that made it easy for even the illiterate to understand.
Whoever wrote this book really gets adventurers, I thought.
The author clearly had a lot of experience adventuring themselves, and had focused on conveying information that had practical utility.
Before I knew it, I’d forgotten all about my original objective and had become engrossed in the book. After a few minutes I came back to my senses and realized I’d been ignoring everyone else.
Man, I really did something terrible to those kids, huh?
I had thought books were just boring things people read to kill time, which was why I hadn’t really felt that guilty about taking this book from those kids. But now I realized just how important this book was. Anyone who used Arts would become much stronger after reading this book. Manual Arts for Dummies was worth a fortune. Every warrior in the world would be willing to give up their entire life savings to read this book if they knew what it contained. I could see now why those kids had waited in the library all day for a chance to read it.
“All right, all right,” I muttered, clicking my tongue. I turned to Ai and Mia.
“What?”
“You want something, old ma—?”
As the two of them cautiously approached me, I handed Manual Arts for Dummies over to them. “Hand this back to the kids cowering in the corner over there,” I said with a sigh.
The two girls gave me surprised looks. “Are you sure? You looked like you were really into it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve read enough. Now hurry up before they run away.”
I shooed them off, and Mia ran over to the other adventurers with a smile on her face.
“W-Wait for me!” Ai shouted, running after her.
As I watched them return the book to the other kids, Chisha strode over to me and said, “You’re nicer than you look.”
“Meh, not really. Also, I don’t look that mean, do I?”
Chisha snickered and said, “You look like a bloodthirsty goblin, but at least you’re nicer than one.”
“I do not look like a goblin!”
And here I thought Chisha was finally starting to act nicer toward me. I’m gonna get you back for those insults someday, mark my words!
“See, look,” Chisha said, interrupting my admittedly bloodthirsty thoughts.
I looked up and saw Ai holding a book out toward me. “Huh?”
She muttered something I didn’t quite catch, then tried to push the book into my hands.
“What’s going on?”
“I returned the book for you, so I came back with a replacement! This is actually the book we’d borrowed for today, but we’ll let you read it first just this once!”
After shoving the book into my hands Ai ran off.
Wow, I guess she’s nicer than she looks too.
Smiling, I looked down at the book she’d handed me. The title read: A Guide to the Dungeons Around Freelea.
I opened the book and the first thing I saw was a two-page spread showing a map of Freelea and the surrounding region.
Oh yeah, I guess newbies like them could learn a lot from this book. But for guys like us...
The Freelea region was practically our backyard at this point. We knew where all the dungeons were, what their gimmicks were, and what monsters you could find in them. There wasn’t much a book like this would be able to offer us.
Or so I thought, because when I took a closer look at the map I realized it was far more detailed than I’d given it credit for. For one thing, there were numbers written down next to each dungeon. Presumably, information on the respective dungeons could be found on those pages, which was all well and good. But there was also something called a “level” written next to each dungeon.
Wait, is this a numerical representation of a dungeon’s difficulty?!
Indeed, as I pored over the map, I saw dungeons we’d thought were easy had low “level” numbers and the ones we’d found hard had much higher ones.
I always thought it was dumb to try and think of strength in terms of numbers, but seeing it all laid out like this makes me realize numbers are a pretty good guideline.
Of course, a number alone couldn’t convey the intricacies of just how difficult or easy a dungeon was, and if you relied solely on this level number to decide which dungeons to explore, you’d be in for a rude awakening. But it was still a useful thing to reference.
Until that moment I’d only been mildly impressed by the book, but very soon I realized it was far greater than I’d realized. As I scanned all of the dungeons on the map, I noticed something earth-shattering.
This map includes dungeons we never found!
In fact there were so many of them I was shocked it had taken me this long to notice. There were three times as many dungeons we hadn’t discovered than ones we knew about on this map.
H-Hold on a sec! Doesn’t this mean... Cold sweat started pouring down my back.
The implications of what was written on this map were huge. It wasn’t just that it contained dungeons we weren’t aware of—some of those dungeons would give even us a struggle. This was something my party mates needed to see.
“Geeko, Baltore, get a load of this!” I called them over, and we started poring over the map together.