Smelling Salts were an item that needed to be crafted via alchemy, and they’re quality depended on the skill of the Alchemist crafting them. However, Alchemist was a rather unpopular class. In order to make high quality items, an Alchemist needed to be quite skilled, and have high stats to boot. However, Alchemist was a class that was wholly unsuited to fighting. Most adventurer parties were focused on combat so they were dead weight, and even if you decided to take an Alchemist along to raise their stats, if they spent all their time fighting they wouldn’t have any time to hone their skills as an actual Alchemist. Occasionally some mages decided to dabble in alchemy when they got older and retired from active adventuring, but there were very few truly skilled Alchemists out there.
“These Smelling Salts even worked on the Commander Ants, which means each one of these bags was really high quality.”
The reason Smelling Salts weren’t often used by adventurers was because there were only some monsters that they worked on, and of the categories of monster they did work on they tended to only be effective on the weaker ones. Since the efficacy of the item was dependent on the crafter, it meant that the Alchemist who’d made these needed to at least have stats higher than the B-rank Commander Ants on top of having a lot of alchemy experience.
“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve heard of Freelea having any skilled Alchemists. Just who could have...”
Mia suddenly raised her hand. “Oh, I know who made these bags!”
“Really?! Who is it?”
Mia smiled and replied, “Well, you see... The one who made all these bags is Rex!”
“Huh?”
I’d heard that name what felt like a dozen times now since coming to Freelea.
So does that mean that not only is Rex a godlike adventurer, a pioneer who discovered new fighting tactics, and sage who knows everything about the dungeons and monsters around here, but he’s also a skilled Alchemist?! What is he, some kind of god?
“When I was exploring the Guild the other day, I saw him making a bunch of bags. He looked like he was getting tired, so I helped him out a bit! He even thanked me and gave me some candy after we were done.” Mia giggled as she thought back to that event.
“H-Hey! If you were helping him, why didn’t you call me over? I wanted to help Rex too!” Ai shouted, shaking Mia by the shoulders.
“But you’re the one who said you didn’t want to be bothered because you were doing magic training, Ai!” Mia protested.
“This does explain a lot about Veteram’s sudden competence,” Baltore muttered.
I gave him an incredulous look. “Wait, you think this Rex guy predicted the ant attack?! No fucking way! Unless he’s actually a god, then—”
“No, it’s definitely possible that Rex predicted this,” Chisha, who’d been quiet until now, muttered softly.
“Y-You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
However, Chisha’s words held weight. She wasn’t like Mia, who didn’t grasp the full enormity of this feat, or like Ai, who blindly worshipped Rex. No, it was clear from her expression she was thinking about this very seriously.
“I mean, think about it—until now Rex has done a bunch of crazy stuff no one expected. Isn’t it a bit too much of a coincidence that the first monster used as an example to explain how the bestiary works is a Killer Ant?”
“Oh...”
In retrospect, it was indeed strange that the Killer Ant of all monsters had been chosen as the first example. It wasn’t a particularly famous monster, and you only really saw it in the Ants’ Nest dungeon around Freelea. If there was a reason Rex put that in the most prominent section of the bestiary, then...
“You mean Rex actually knew this ant attack would happen?”
Chisha turned back to where the Adventurers’ Guild was. “I don’t know, but I get the feeling we’re going to find out very soon.”
A second later, a messenger ran up saying that the Adventurers’ Guild had sent out an emergency summons and all adventurers were required to attend.
❈❈❈
“I’m Freelea’s Guild Master, Veteram,” Veteram announced. He was standing in front of a large blackboard, his loud voice booming across the packed training grounds. “Since we’re low on time, I’ll cut right to the chase and explain the emergency quest we’ve just issued! First off, we’ve learned that it wasn’t just Freelea that was attacked by Killer Ants. It seems both the capital and Nivar were attacked by ants at almost the exact same time we were.”
Upon hearing Veteram’s words, the adventurers crowded together in the Guild started muttering worriedly to each other. Veteram’s loud voice cut through the chatter again however, quieting everyone.
“In a more fortunate turn of events, thanks to the multiple attack locations, we were able to discern where the enemy is coming from! Freelea, the capital, and Nivar are all located in different regions, and there’s only one location that has easy access to all three—the Tempest Mountains!”
Veteram drew a simple map onto the blackboard and drew a big circle around the mountains in the center.
“The ants dug underground tunnels from the Tempest Mountains to all three cities and attacked them simultaneously. We’ve decided to call these tunnels the Great Caverns, and we’ve joined forces with the capital’s and Nivar’s Adventurers’ Guilds to issue an Ant Queen extermination quest!”
The other adventurers started cheering, but me and my companions didn’t share in their joy.
Reason being: If all three Guilds have issued the same quest, that means it’ll be a joint operation.
I had no objections to Veteram’s decision to work together with the other two Guilds—the decision made sense, and in fact was probably the best way to deal with the threat we were facing. But still...I wasn’t happy about it.
Freelea had no heroes. That was something everyone knew. Whereas other big cities like the capital had exceptionally powerful heroes attached to their cities like Ain, the Prince of Light, no real adventurers of note called Freelea home despite its title as the City of Adventurers. The closest thing we had was Nirva the Invincible Blademaster, and while he did technically live in Freelea, he only ever showed up for the big tournaments and was otherwise absent. As a result, whenever multiple Guilds came together to do big joint operations, it was always Freelea that had the poorest showing. Part of the reason the guys and I had chosen to go to explore the frontiers was because we’d wanted to become strong enough to show the rest of the world that Freelea had badasses too.
The adventurers in this city have definitely gotten stronger in the months we were gone, but...
My thoughts trailed off. I already knew the truth: we still didn’t have anyone who was at the level where they could compete with heroes like Ain or the knights that served under him. And if guys like that were planning on participating in this operation... Well, it was likely they’d get to the queen first and win all the glory. I was sure Veteram was aware of that as well, and yet he seemed a lot more composed than I expected him to be. He waited patiently for the adventurers to calm down before continuing his explanation.
“The Tempest Mountains serve as the boundary between our three regions, and it’ll take a full three days by carriage to get there. Normally, we wouldn’t even take the carriages and work our way backwards from the tunnels to make sure no more ants pop up in Freelea, which would take an even longer ten days, but...” Veteram looked off to the side as he trailed off, but before I could turn to see what he was staring at he said, “A certain adventurer I’m sure you’re all familiar with taught me a route to the mountains that’ll take less than a day. With it, we should be able to reach the Ants’ Nest before tomorrow.”