Having finished delivering the felled lumber from the Treant Forest to the alchemists, Rei bought various skewers from food stalls and, without any preamble, decided to take the A-Rank promotion exam.
Once he made up his mind, he wasted no time.
Along the way, he picked up a few dishes besides skewers from the stalls, enjoyed them with Set, and then returned to the Lord's Manor.
A fair amount of time had passed since he had left, so he hoped Nielson and Daskar's negotiations were finished. He exchanged greetings with the gatekeeper, stepped inside the mansion, parted ways with Set as it headed for the courtyard, and had a maid guide him to the office.
On the way, he passed several people he didn't recognize, most of whom wore displeased expressions.
They were probably scheduled to meet with Lord Daskar but got turned away.
With Nielson present, meeting other visitors was simply out of the question. If they did have to meet someone, Nielson would need to hide somewhere — but knowing her personality, Rei understood perfectly well that she would never do any such thing. And Daskar, who wanted to keep the existence of fairies hidden from the public as much as possible, would never dream of leaving Nielson in someone else's care. Considering the possibility that negotiations with Nielson were dragging on, there probably wasn't time to see other people anyway.
Of course, if someone had come on urgent business, that might have been a different story.
Even so, the fact that Rei was being guided to the office so smoothly was likely because Daskar had been informed in advance that he would be returning.
The maid stopped in front of the office and knocked on the same ornate door as always.
"Lord Daskar, Lord Rei has arrived."
'Rei? Come in.'
Hearing the voice from within, the maid stepped aside for Rei. She had probably been instructed by Daskar before Rei's arrival — only Rei would enter the office, and she apparently had no intention of following him in.
Rei thanked the maid for guiding him, then opened the door and stepped inside.
"Excuse me. ...Ah, just as I thought."
He said "just as I thought" because it was plainly obvious that Nielson and Daskar were locked in negotiations, neither side yielding an inch.
The skewers he had left on the table were already completely gone — only the sticks remained on the plate.
(How did Nielson eat those skewers? She doesn't look messy at all, but...)
Nielson was only about the size of a palm. Because of that, eating skewers should have been quite an ordeal for her. It wouldn't have been strange for her entire body to be covered in meat juices and tare, but as far as Rei could tell, there wasn't a speck on her anywhere.
Maybe Daskar pulled the meat off the skewers for her?
...Incidentally, Rei was personally the type to eat skewers right off the stick. Back in Japan, whenever he had gathered for meals with friends, he had gotten into arguments with people who would pull yakitori off the skewers before eating. To be precise, the issue wasn't that they removed their own portions from the sticks — it was that they pulled off everyone else's too.
"You're back. Did you deliver the Treant Forest wood without any issues?"
"Yes, that went off without a hitch. I was late because I stopped by some food stalls on the way back."
Saying so, Rei retrieved the skewers he had purchased from the stalls out of his Misty Ring and set them on a plate. An appetite-stimulating aroma wafted through the office.
It occurred to Rei, far too late, whether it was really appropriate to be letting such a smell drift through the office. Then again, the moment he had left the skewers behind before heading out, it had already been too late.
"I see. ...Then let's get straight to the point. The A-Rank promotion exam — what's your decision?"
Daskar had figured that since he had only just brought it up, Rei wouldn't give an answer right away and would need a few days to think it over. He asked anyway because he wanted to convey just how seriously he was treating the matter.
That was why, when Rei spoke his next words, all Daskar could do was stare in surprise.
"Understood. I'll take the promotion exam."
"...Huh?"
A dumbfounded sound slipped from Daskar's mouth. Hearing it, Rei was the one who ended up looking surprised.
"Is something the matter?"
"No, just now — did you say you'd take the A-Rank adventurer promotion exam?"
"Yes. That's what I intend, but...?"
"...Are you serious?"
From Rei's perspective, those were words he had no idea how to respond to. After all, it was Daskar who had asked Rei to take the A-Rank adventurer promotion exam in the first place. Yet the moment Rei agreed, Daskar asked if he was serious. Rei couldn't help but wonder if the whole thing about taking the promotion exam had been some kind of joke.
It wouldn't have been unreasonable for him to think so.
"Um, was the promotion exam business a joke by any chance?"
"No, it's nothing like that. I fully intended to have you take the promotion exam. I was just surprised because I never expected to get an answer that easily."
"For things like this, thinking too deeply only leads to confusion. It's better to decide based on momentum and the mood of the moment."
"...No, listen — this is the A-Rank adventurer promotion exam we're talking about. Is it really okay to decide it like that?"
"It's fine. Besides, if I thought about it too deeply, I might end up saying I won't take the exam at all. You want me to take it, don't you, Lord Daskar? Then isn't it better to leave things as they are?"
Daskar nodded at Rei's words. Indeed, if he pressed further by asking "Are you really going to take the exam?" and Rei ended up deciding not to, that would have been the worst possible outcome.
"Then I'll ask one last time. Are you certain?"
"Yes. Besides, right now, if I pass the promotion exam, you'll assist me with various things through a proxy agent and the like, Lord Daskar. ...But that's exactly what I want to ask — is it really all right for you to go that far to help me?"
Daskar was the lord who held territory in the sole frontier of the Kingdom of Mireana, and the leader of the Neutral Faction, one of the Three Great Factions. It was only natural for Rei to wonder whether such a person should be cooperating this extensively with someone who wasn't even his subordinate — though others viewed Rei as Daskar's right-hand man.
But Daskar nodded as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Thanks to you, the benefits Gilm has reaped up to now are immense. Considering that, such a thing is only natural."
"Even so, it feels like you might be going a bit overboard. Not that I'm complaining — personally, I'd be glad for the help. That's also part of why I decided to take the promotion exam."
To put it bluntly, the fact that Daskar would provide various forms of assistance was a major factor in his decision to go through with it now. Back in Japan, he had often seen TV shopping programs touting things like "Order now and we'll throw in a special deluxe bonus!" — and it was an undeniable fact that something similar was at work in Rei's decision to accept Daskar's request this time.
(Maybe if I'd held out a little longer, Lord Daskar might have offered even more help. ...Then again, if I'd pushed too hard, he might have said he wouldn't help at all.)
Demanding assistance too aggressively and ending up with none whatsoever was something Rei definitely wanted to avoid. If that was the case, accepting under the current terms was unquestionably the best move.
"So, assuming I'm taking the promotion exam... what do I need to do?"
"For now, we'll handle the preparations on our end. An A-Rank promotion exam requires letters of recommendation from nobles — and not just from me. We'll have those ready for you."
"Understood, but... how did Antelme manage to become an A-Rank adventurer?"
If it could be achieved through sheer ability alone, it wouldn't have been strange for Antelme to have earned his rank either. When Rei fought him, he had taken him down without even resorting to his trump card, the Flame Emperor's Crimson Armor, but Antelme's combat prowess was undeniably first-rate.
However, in stark contrast to that ability, Antelme had deeply problematic personality traits.
...Though when it came to personality issues, Rei supposed he wasn't exactly one to talk.
Regardless, given Antelme's disposition, it was hard to imagine he could have received letters of recommendation from multiple nobles. Yet the fact that he had indeed become an A-Rank adventurer meant he must have cleared that hurdle somehow.
"Antelme is of noble blood. Considering that, obtaining letters of recommendation from nobles probably wasn't difficult for him. He had the ability to back it up, after all. Plus..."
Daskar paused, turned his gaze back to Rei, and continued.
"Antelme, as befitting someone of noble blood, was well-versed in etiquette and manners toward nobles. In that regard, you could say he was closer to being an A-Rank adventurer than you are, Rei."
"Having noble blood is enviable, isn't it."
"Indeed. But precisely because one has noble blood, there are also drawbacks. Such as one's personality becoming warped by one's upbringing. That much should be evident from looking at Antelme."
"Well, that's true. That said, it's not as though every noble has a warped personality. There are plenty of solid, respectable people among the nobility as well."
"True. But this is a matter of probability. Family disposition and the like would also come into play."
Rei could understand Daskar's point. He could understand it — but if asked whether Antelme would have turned out any differently had he been raised another way, Rei would still have to tilt his head in doubt. It was simply impossible to imagine Antelme with any other kind of personality.
"What happened to Antelme?"
"He's dead."
Daskar replied to Rei's question curtly. Whether those words were true or not, Rei couldn't say for certain. There was a chance he was still alive, but the fact that Daskar stated it so definitively meant that even if he were, he would never surface in public again. If that was the case, Antelme was someone Rei would never have to deal with again — there was no need to think any further about what had become of him.
"I see. Understood. ...Setting that aside, roughly when would the promotion exam begin?"
If this were a lower-ranked promotion exam, they were held with reasonable frequency. The ones Rei had taken in the past had certainly been that way. But this time, he would be taking the A-Rank promotion exam. A-Rank was the highest rank an adventurer could achieve, barring the exceptional S-Rank designation. Given that it was a promotion exam to such a rank, they couldn't simply hold one on a whim. Rei had heard as much from someone before, so he more or less understood the situation.
"Hard to say. I'd like to push it through as quickly as possible, but the Guild is swamped with the Expansion Construction."
"I imagine so."
Many people had flocked to Gilm seeking work due to the Expansion Construction, and the Guild was busy assigning jobs to all of them — to the point where every day was a hellish grind. For simple tasks, they had implemented measures such as allowing paperwork to be processed at the work sites rather than requiring everyone to come to the Guild in person, but that was only marginally better than a drop in the ocean.
For a Guild in that state to handle a promotion exam — and an A-Rank one at that — it was naturally questionable whether they could manage it at all. Under normal circumstances, they would dispatch personnel from a nearby branch, but with Gilm being a frontier town, even that was difficult. There were cities like Abuelo and Sablusta near Gilm, but those were towns situated along the route to Gilm. Naturally, adventurers heading to Gilm stopped at those towns along the way, picking up or completing requests there — so while not as overwhelmed as Gilm, the guild staff in those towns were still kept busy.
Even so, they had sent a certain amount of manpower to Gilm, and the Guild here was still swamped.
(Given all that, at worst the Rank Up Exam might get pushed back to winter when the Expansion Construction settles down. I'd prefer it sooner, though...)
That was what Rei thought.