A few days had passed since Rei walked around Anesis with Bluitt, Ranigus, and Teles. On the morning in question, a large crowd had gathered in front of one of the city's gates.
Given that it was winter, the number of people passing through wouldn't normally be this large. Even so, on this particular day, dozens upon dozens of people had assembled.
It was only natural. Among those present were Liberte, the lord of Anesis, and his wife Arcadia. Serving as their escorts were Filma, the captain of the Duke Kerebel's Knight Order, along with his subordinate knights. Gathered alongside them were various other nobles who had dealings with the people about to depart, as well as their own escorts.
"Rei, come visit my territory next time. It's a pretty interesting place—I think you'd like it," Bluitt said.
"Ah... right. I need to focus on the Expansion Construction in Gilm for a while, so it'll be a bit difficult. But once I have some free time, I'll think about it."
"What, so would it be better for me to go visit Gilm instead?"
"Yeah. I think that'd be interesting too. Right now... well, actually, once spring comes, a lot of people will gather in Gilm again for the Expansion Construction, so it should be quite lively and fun."
"Heh. Well, at my level, I'd probably need to hire escorts to get all the way out to Gilm on the frontier."
Bluitt was fairly confident when it came to street fights in town, but he had absolutely no confidence in going alone to Gilm—a frontier settlement where High-Rank Monsters appearing without warning was far from unusual. Or rather, perhaps he might have had that much confidence before, but having been beaten so thoroughly in his mock battle with Rei, he no longer overestimated his own abilities.
In any case, Ranigus chimed in on Bluitt's words.
"Oh, Gilm, huh? Sounds a bit interesting. Thanks to the ongoing Expansion Construction, monsters don't come out as often, right?"
"Well, around the main roads, at least."
The materials needed for the Expansion Construction in Gilm could never be in sufficient supply, no matter how much was stockpiled. They were making effective use of the timber from the Treant Forest, but expanding Gilm, situated on the frontier, naturally required massive amounts of materials beyond just wood. Transporting all of it required a large number of Carriages, and most of the monsters that appeared on the main roads were dealt with by the escorts.
Because it was the frontier, monsters that would normally be impossible for Carriage escorts to handle sometimes appeared. However, with the construction boom in full swing, enormous numbers of adventurers had been hired, and Gilm itself would also issue subjugation requests to keep the main roads safe. Considering all that, it was an undeniable fact that getting to Gilm had become easier compared to before the Expansion Construction began.
"Is that so? Then maybe I should seriously consider going."
"Well, I won't stop you if you do, but Gilm has a lot of rough characters right now... though I guess you don't need to worry about that part, Bluitt. There are some High-Rank Adventurers with bad personalities mixed in, though, so you'd need to be careful on that front."
Bluitt paused for a moment at Rei's words. Here in Anesis, he was the type to get into fights with anyone who picked a fight with him. But if he pulled something like that in Gilm, there was a real possibility his opponent could turn out to be a High-Rank Adventurer. Even so, given Bluitt's personality, if he saw someone being harassed, it was unlikely he would just stand by and do nothing.
"Ah... I'll keep that in mind for now. So, what about you, Ranigus? You heading to Gilm too?"
"Me? Hmm, I wonder. Hearing all that... kind of makes me lose the urge to go. High-Rank Adventurers just walking around town, and those same High-Rank Adventurers having nasty personalities? What kind of place is that?"
"Hey now, it's not like every High-Rank Adventurer has a bad personality. I mean, I'm a High-Rank Adventurer myself."
Ranigus and Bluitt both stared intently at Rei's face as he said that. Eventually, they looked at each other, nodded, and spoke in unison.
"So there really isn't a single High-Rank Adventurer with a decent personality."
"Right."
"Hey!"
At what was an absurdly harsh assessment, Rei cried out almost reflexively.
"No, but... come on, right?"
"Yeah."
Faced with the two of them showing an almost uncanny level of mutual understanding, Rei wore a dissatisfied expression and averted his gaze. Then his eyes fell on Set, who for some reason had tagged along and was currently being petted by maids from the Duke Kerebel Mansion a short distance away, purring contentedly.
Perhaps sensing Rei's gaze, Set tilted its head as if to ask, "What's wrong?"
Rei shook his head to indicate it was nothing, then turned his attention toward the spot where the largest crowd had gathered—where Elena was.
Besides Liberte and Arcadia, several other nobles were there, including Teles. And naturally, Ara was present as well.
Those departing today were Rei, Elena, and Ara. Along with them, though not human, were the two creatures, Set and Ielo.
Amidst all of that, the one drawing the largest crowd was, unsurprisingly, Elena.
"What's wrong?" Bluitt asked, puzzled, seeing Rei gazing in Elena's direction.
A faint trace of their earlier joking atmosphere still lingered, but he must have been curious about Rei's demeanor.
"No, I was just thinking about how many people are around Elena."
"That's obvious. She's essentially the symbol of the Noble's Faction. She's naturally more popular than you. ...What, feeling lonely?"
"It's not that. It's just that even from watching like this, I could tell how much Elena is loved by the people of Anesis... and by the Noble's Faction."
Even as he said that, Rei looked back toward Elena once more. Liberte and Arcadia—Elena's parents. And beyond them, the many people of the Noble's Faction who adored Elena, the Princess General. He wondered what those people thought of him, standing beside her.
Liberte and Arcadia had accepted Rei's relationship with Elena in a largely tacit manner. But what they truly felt in their hearts, even Rei couldn't say. When he thought about that, it was perhaps inevitable that a complicated feeling would well up inside him.
"Well, yeah. Even from my perspective as a member of the King's Faction, Elena's existence is significant. When you consider the Kingdom of Mireana as a whole, her importance isn't limited to the Noble's Faction—she's vital to the nation itself."
Ranigus's words carried no hint of joking; they were entirely serious. And in the next moment, he turned his gaze toward Rei and continued.
"But if we're talking about important figures, that applies to you too, Rei. If anything, you've been making such flashy moves that lately Crimson has been becoming even more famous than the Princess General."
"Have I? Well, I can't exactly deny that I've been making flashy moves, but... it's less that I'm proactively going out and doing things, and more accurate to say I keep getting caught up in incidents."
From an outsider's perspective, it might look like Rei was running wild doing as he pleased, but from his own point of view, he wasn't the one starting incidents—he was getting swept into them. Of course, it wasn't as though incidents caused by Rei himself were completely nonexistent, such as when Gaiska hired Black Wolf.
"...No matter what you yourself may think, if other people see it that way, you can't exactly stop them."
"Urk."
When put like that, Rei couldn't argue back. In reality, going around correcting every rumor about him was impossible. If it were something like a Bard's song, it wouldn't be impossible to set the record straight, but since Bards also had to earn a living through their songs, it wasn't unreasonable for them to embellish the rumors they heard or the stories they researched. Of course, when the people who heard from those Bards passed the tales along to their friends and acquaintances, the embellishments would only snowball further with each retelling.
"Well, give it up. That kind of thing just comes down to how you carry yourself normally," Bluitt said with a grin.
In truth, Rei understood that his flashy actions were often highlighted because of his general conduct, so he couldn't really say anything more on the matter. From a Bard's perspective, Rei making flashy moves was an incredibly valuable source of income—that much was certain. That said, Rei himself had hardly ever actually met a Bard.
As they were having that conversation, perhaps having finished speaking with Elena, Liberte and Arcadia made their way toward Rei. When the Duke and Duchess of Kerebel moved, naturally many of the other nobles nearby moved along with them. Ranigus and Bluitt stepped aside to make room—though, perhaps because they knew the relationship between Rei and Elena, they didn't refrain from sending teasing glances his way as they left.
"Rei, your time in Anesis was short. But in that brief span, I feel like enough incidents happened to cover several years' worth."
"I can't deny that."
Rei smiled as he replied to Liberte, who had spoken with a smile of his own.
In truth, the major events that had occurred since Rei came to Anesis—the mock battle that many nobles had participated in, the battle with Black Wolf, the existence of the Flesh Cocoon that was likely the monster Celestan had been trying to unseal. On top of that, when the Flesh Cocoon was defeated, a spatial anomaly had occurred, and the site where Celestan's house once stood simply vanished, leaving behind a scene as if it had been scooped out with a giant spoon. Furthermore, with Celestan's disappearance, the underworld of Anesis—which had remained stable thanks to him, for better or worse—was now in turmoil, with internal conflicts over his succession intensifying.
Thinking of all that, Rei couldn't deny Liberte's words. And on top of it all, those were only the matters Rei was currently aware of. In reality, there was a very real possibility that problems he hadn't even grasped... no, problems that even Liberte hadn't anticipated could arise.
"That said, the Black Wolf matter was something we needed to handle on our end eventually. You took care of that for us, so I have no complaints about you, Rei."
"...Is that so."
For Rei, the greatest lingering regret from this incident was undoubtedly the matter of Black Wolf. The words he returned to Liberte carried a faint bitter edge.
The fact that Black Wolf had been killed had been conveyed to Liberte through Elena, but the corpse was still inside Rei's Misty Ring. Rei had no intention of handing over the body of Black Wolf—someone he believed had come from the same Japan as himself—to Liberte. He planned to burn it somewhere along the way back to Gilm—perhaps in the mountains—and bury the ashes.
Into the conversation between Rei and Liberte, Arcadia interjected from the side.
"Please take care of that child."
"I will."
"...She may seem like she can handle anything on her own, but she's surprisingly clumsy in her daily life. That side of her is rather endearing, though."
"W-Wait, Mother!"
Elena, who had been attending to other nobles a short distance from Rei and the others, must have heard Arcadia's voice. She cried out in a panic. For Elena, the thought of an embarrassing secret—at least from Elena's own subjective perspective—being revealed to Rei was absolutely intolerable. Leaving the nobles she had been speaking with behind on the spot, she rushed over to Arcadia's side.
Arcadia watched Elena's flustered reaction with a smile.
"Hehe. A child who just can't leave her mother's side."
"That's not it! Honestly, what were you about to tell Rei?"
"Ah... I can't say I wasn't a little curious to hear it myself, but... no, never mind. Right."
What stopped him from finishing the sentence was the sheer intensity of the glare Elena directed at him.
"Did you say something?"
"No, nothing at all. Look, I was just thinking it's about time we set out from Anesis."
Rei said that in a deflecting manner, but in truth, more than thirty minutes had already passed since the send-off began. Given that they couldn't stand there receiving farewells forever, it was indeed time to depart.
"Hmm, right. Then let's be off."
With Elena's words, their departure was decided. Finally, Rei turned his gaze toward Filma, who had accompanied them as Liberte's escort.
"I'm looking forward to our next sparring match."
"And I shall continue my training and hone my skills in the meantime."
After exchanging those brief words, Rei and his group departed for Gilm.