Nighttime. Lowe was sitting in a noisy corner of a tavern.
Lowe’s mild skill exhaustion had healed, though whether this was thanks to the “special medicine” Lululee had forced on him, he couldn’t tell. But that awful taste of that mysterious fluid was stuck on his tongue, so he was drinking some strong alcohol to wash it down.
Gazing absentmindedly at the drunken adventurers causing a ruckus, he waited patiently for the person he was to meet up with.
“Hey! You’re looking dour!” came a cheery voice, accompanied by a smack on the back.
Lowe violently spat out the drink he was about to swallow. “Koff! Goddamn… It’s bad for my heart when you show up like that, Gald. Cut it out.”
“It’s your fault for letting your guard down.” A young man came over to him with a cheerful laugh. His irises were noticeably small, his skin was pale, and his hair was brown. He was dressed in light equipment, with a knife at his waist—a typical adventurer getup. Gald ordered some ale from the server and sat across from Lowe.
“So? It’s been a long time since I last heard from you, so what’s made you reach out so suddenly? Oh, if it’s about a girl, I’ll stick with ya till morning!” Gald was grinning, and he looked like he was in a great mood. “Man, how long has it been since I last chatted with you over drinks? Do you have off work tomorrow? Let’s chat till morning. I have no plans tomorrow!”
While sighing at Gald’s relentless cheer, Lowe got straight to the point. “Hey, I know this is a weird question, but you don’t know anything about a crystal gate made by someone other than the Adventurers Guild, do you?”
“Whoa, brutal. Talking about work?!” Gald pursed his lips with a tsk. When the server brought him his drink, he tossed it back sulkily and sighed with sincere disappointment.
“I figured you would know,” said Lowe.
“Ah, so you’re counting on me?” Gald’s bad mood vanished in the blink of an eye, his eyes instantly shining as he flashed a toothy grin. “A crystal gate made by someone other than the guild—do you mean that thing on the plains?”
“You know?” Lowe was a little taken aback to hear Gald bring the plains up, unprompted.
“We’re tentatively looking into that incident, too. Just between you and me. I’ll say it because it’s you, but…” Gald lowered his voice slightly, and with a completely different air from before, he whispered, “Lately, things have been a little unstable at the Dark Guild.”
The Dark Guild. Gald calmly saying that name did not surprise Lowe.
That was because Lowe knew that Gald, a man dressed like any other adventurer, who seemed incredibly ordinary aside from his annoying peppiness, was in fact a mage member of the Dark Guild—an assassin. Of course he wore adventurer equipment to mingle among ordinary people.
“Unstable?”
“Yeah. Just before monsters started to appear on the plains, a whole bunch of the younger members all left the Dark Guild…and since they didn’t take the appropriate steps, they became pact-breakers.”
“…”
The appropriate steps. That meant having their memories removed.
The Dark Guild possessed powerful spells that they had cultivated on their own, along with technology derived from knowledge that was kept from the public, referred to as a whole as “forbidden techniques.” They didn’t want those techniques to leave their ranks. For that reason, anyone who wanted to cut ties with the Dark Guild had to have their memories of the forbidden techniques erased. Those who left the Dark Guild without adhering to these terms were called pact-breakers, and the guild would protect their forbidden techniques by marking these people as targets for assassination.
“I’ve been in the Dark Guild for a long time, but it’s not like I know all their forbidden techniques. If, among their techniques, there was a way of creating a crystal gate…”
“You mean there’s a good chance that a pact-breaker brought it to the outside?” Lowe asked.
“Yep. That’s why I’m keeping my eye on the Altano incident, too. If you find out anything, let me know!” Gald smiled brightly, then knocked back his drink.
Lowe sighed. “A whole bunch of pact-breakers, huh…? I gotcha. No wonder I’ve had a lot of ‘work’ lately. So that’s what’s been going on.”
“I’m actually surprised you didn’t know.”
“I don’t wanna get too involved with the Dark Guild. It’s best not to pry too deeply.”
When Lowe put the money for the booze on the table and got up, Gald instantly pouted in protest. “Huh? You’re going already? We’re not gonna talk about your love life?”
“Like hell I would.”
Leaving behind Gald as he gave a bored tsk, Lowe walked out of the tavern.