When Worker and Rei came down to the first floor of the Guild, the gazes of the Guild Staff Members gathered on the two of them.
For the staff, whether Rei had passed the Promotion Exam—whether a new A-Rank Adventurer had been born—was naturally a matter of great curiosity.
Or perhaps, like the Guards, some of them had placed bets on Rei's exam.
Worker understood the surrounding gazes as well, but without saying anything about whether Rei had passed, he simply called out several names.
The staff members whose names were called smiled upon seeing who else had been summoned.
Every one of them was someone who excelled at monster dissection.
Given that they of all people had been called during such a busy period, it wasn't difficult to imagine what that meant.
...The Guild Staff Members standing nearby, however, wore expressions suggesting that having colleagues slip away from work at such a busy time was a problem.
Sorry about this, Rei thought, but since it concerned his Promotion Exam, he had no choice but to ask them to bear with it.
And so, Rei left the Guild together with the staff members Worker had called.
Since they didn't exit through the front entrance, though, he couldn't check on how Set was doing outside.
Their destination was the warehouse.
"Guild Master, the fact that we've been called in this situation means..." one of the staff members began.
But Worker didn't reply. He simply headed toward the warehouse.
The man who had asked the question apparently judged that it was better not to press the matter. Without saying anything further, he followed alongside Rei and the others.
Before long, they arrived at the warehouse Rei had visited several times before.
It was a fairly massive facility, built large enough to accommodate the dissection of even giant monsters. There was still a limit, of course—bringing out something like the Gigant Turtle's corpse would have been impossible.
Everyone filed inside.
The warehouse was now nearly empty of cargo. Under normal circumstances, they would have been taking on monster dissection work here, but the Guild currently had no such leeway.
As a frontier town, Gilm did have businesses other than the Guild that handled monster dissection. That said, the gap in technical skill between the proficient and the inept was wide, and their fees were fundamentally higher than the Guild's. Some among them charged prices high enough to be called outright rip-offs, and there were even unscrupulous operators who stole materials from the monsters they dissected.
In that sense, the Guild—which possessed solid skills, charged reasonable prices, and would certainly not stoop to stealing materials—was fully trustworthy as a dissection partner.
"Now then, the reason I asked you all here scarcely needs saying. There's no point hiding it, so I'll tell you outright: Rei has successfully completed his Promotion Exam in the Forest of Magic."
At Worker's words, the staff members broke into pleased expressions. Among them, a few let out something like an "Alright!"—they had probably bet on Rei passing.
Under normal circumstances, Worker would have reprimanded them for the outburst. But considering what they were about to do in this warehouse, he apparently decided that a little noise was acceptable for now.
"That being the case, I called you here to... dissect A-Rank Monsters and an S-Rank Monster."
"...Excuse me?"
The staff members all raised their voices in unison.
A-Rank Monster dissection was understandable. But where did an S-Rank Monster come into the picture?
Questioning gazes turned toward Worker.
He met them with a smile before speaking.
"Of course, that's because Rei defeated an S-Rank Monster. And so you aren't caught off guard, I'll tell you now—it's an unknown Dragon Species."
"......"
The words that left Worker's mouth were apparently unexpected even for staff members who dissected monsters for a living.
A Wyvern was one thing, but a Dragon that qualified as an S-Rank Monster was something even a Guild Staff Member might see once in a lifetime—if that. No, something they might not encounter even once across several reincarnations.
To be told that such a Dragon's corpse was here—moreover, a new species of Dragon—expecting them not to be astonished would have been unreasonable.
"Um, Guild Master... this isn't a joke or anything, is it?"
"No, it's quite real. That said, the Dragon's dissection should naturally come last, shouldn't it?"
Huh? Why?
At the Guild Master's words, the dissection specialists wore expressions of clear bewilderment.
While it wasn't exactly a case of "love what you do and you'll do it well," dissection was their profession. Naturally, they wanted to try their hand at dissecting a High-Rank Monster. And if it was an unknown Dragon to boot, that desire went without saying.
Worker understood this perfectly—which may have been exactly why he'd phrased it that way.
"You ask why, but the reason I called you here is, at its core, to dissect the A-Rank Monster corpses Rei defeated during his Promotion Exam. Once that's finished, if there's still time to spare, I'd like you to handle the Dragon as well. That's a reasonable expectation, isn't it?"
"Urgh..."
What Worker said was undeniably a sound argument. It was a sound argument, yes—but being told to leave the dissection of an unknown Dragon for last was still not something the staff could accept gracefully.
"Let me put it another way. If the A-Rank Monster dissections are completed swiftly—and naturally, without any issues—then as a reward, I'll permit you to dissect the Dragon."
He stressed the word without issues.
At Worker's words, the staff members showed dissatisfied expressions but said nothing further.
In truth, Worker wasn't wrong. And while the words "unknown Dragon" currently held their rapt attention, stepping back to consider the baseline—even an A-Rank Monster was not normally something that could be dissected so easily.
Having apparently calmed down somewhat, one of the staff members—a man in his fifties who served as their leader—opened his mouth with a reluctant air.
"Got it, Guild Master. So what kind of monster is this A-Rank Monster?"
"Rei, would you do the honors?"
"Fine by me, but which one should I bring out? Or all of them at once?"
Inside Rei's Misty Ring were the corpses of five A-Rank Monsters. Among them, Rei wasn't certain whether the Queen Bee and the Chimera truly qualified as A-Rank. Even so, he held out the possibility that they might.
"Let's see. The Giant Wolf, please."
Nodding at Worker's words, Rei withdrew the Giant Wolf from his Misty Ring.
It came out casually enough, but even as a corpse, the Giant Wolf was more than sufficient to make all who beheld it feel its overwhelming presence.
"This is..."
One of the staff members gasped at the Giant Wolf that had suddenly materialized before them. He already knew Rei possessed an Item Box, so the Misty Ring itself wasn't the surprise. What startled him was the sheer, overwhelming presence the Giant Wolf exuded even in death.
"This Giant Wolf. We don't know its exact name, but Rei recognizes it as an A-Rank Monster, and from what I can see here, I concur. From the perspective of those of you accustomed to dissecting monsters, how does it look?"
The staff members exchanged glances, conversing through looks alone. But since everyone was thinking the same thing, they reached a consensus almost instantly.
"I'd say this is unquestionably an A-Rank Monster. That said, it's only our assessment. If you want to know in greater detail, it'd be best to research it properly."
"Easier said than done. It's a monster from the Forest of Magic, after all."
When Worker said that, the others nodded in agreement.
The Forest of Magic was fundamentally off-limits. This was because many who had ventured there in the past never returned—but while the casualties were high, not every expedition had ended in total annihilation. Some had come back safely, and a few had even slain monsters and brought back their corpses.
Moreover, while approaching the Forest of Magic was prohibited, there were no sentries posted, nor was there any kind of barrier in place. If an Adventurer who knew the forest's location was determined enough, heading there was by no means impossible.
Gilm had no shortage of skilled Adventurers, and among them, naturally, were more than a few who held high pride. The majority of such people died in the Forest of Magic—or sometimes before even reaching it—but a handful, blessed with both luck and ability, would hunt monsters there and return with their remains.
Naturally, being creatures from the prohibited Forest of Magic, those corpses couldn't be sold at the Guild. ...There were some who tried to sell them without mentioning their origin, but most took their goods to Merchants outside the Guild instead. The Merchants would then sell that information back to the Guild, allowing it to gather at least some intelligence on the Forest of Magic's monsters.
What they'd learned from this was that while the forest contained creatures like the Water Bear that also inhabited areas outside its borders, it simultaneously harbored a vast number of endemic species found nowhere else.
The Giant Wolf Rei had produced was one that even the dissection specialists had never encountered. When Worker declared it was unquestionably a Forest of Magic endemic species, they accepted it without argument.
"In that case, the dissection aside, the question is what to do about the materials."
If this had been a monster they'd dissected before, they would have known exactly which parts could be used as materials. But with an unknown creature, there was no telling which portions were usable. They would have to investigate as they worked.
"For now, the Magic Stone, the meat, and any parts that look like usable materials—I'll be taking those. Ah, and when I say materials, I don't mean all of them."
"That's... well, can't be helped, I suppose."
For the staff, the Magic Stone and materials of an unknown monster held enormous significance. The Magic Stone, in particular, was crucial for understanding a monster's properties. That said, it was widely known that Rei collected Magic Stones, so they had no objection on that front.
But losing the materials as well was something they'd have preferred to negotiate. Under Guild rules, if an Adventurer requested only dissection and claimed the materials for themselves, the staff had no choice but to comply.
Even knowing that, when it came to an unknown A-Rank Monster, it was only natural for the Guild to want to keep at least some of the materials.
Even so, Rei wasn't claiming all the materials—he'd said "a certain amount"—which showed he'd taken the Guild's interests into account.
"Sorry, but I'm not backing down on this. The fact that I'm handing over any materials at all is already a significant concession. If that's not acceptable, I'll have the dissection done somewhere other than the Guild. And that would be a problem for you too, wouldn't it?"
At Rei's words, the staff members nodded.
In truth, merely dissecting an unknown A-Rank Monster would yield a considerable amount of information. For the Guild, that alone was sufficient profit.
But if Rei took his business to an outside dissection service? They'd have no choice but to purchase the information secondhand, and some dissection businesses lacked the skill to handle the job properly. A botched dissection of a precious unknown A-Rank Monster would be a terrible waste.
Weighing those circumstances, they concluded that they truly needed to handle this themselves—and the Guild Staff Members accepted Rei's terms.