The Alchemist who had followed Rei into the dining hall—Roger—stood dumbfounded.
It was evening, and the establishment was famous for its delicious food, just as Lindy had said. Perhaps because of that, it was already packed with customers.
Fortunately, there were a few empty seats. They settled in, and Rei asked the Clerk whether they could bring food out to Seto waiting outside. The Clerk hesitated for a moment before agreeing.
Whether that was because the Clerk recognized Rei as the Adventurer who used a Gryphon as a Tamed Monster, or because Roger was a skilled Alchemist, Rei couldn't say. But since the Clerk agreed on the condition that he'd be properly compensated, Rei immediately started ordering for both himself and Seto.
At first, Roger figured from the prices on the menu that picking up the tab wouldn't be a problem. But no sooner had the dishes started arriving than Rei and Seto tore into them, one after another.
Seto was one thing, but Roger could only stare in disbelief at Rei, wondering where all that food was going in such a small body.
Only after polishing off what amounted to more than ten people's worth of food did Rei finally stop.
The other customers who had been watching let out various expressions—surprise, relief—now that he was finished.
For an Adventurer, the body was capital. Work meant irregular meals, and depending on the job, going without food or drink for extended stretches was far from rare. That lifestyle produced more than a few Adventurers with formidable appetites.
But even so, Rei's consumption was frankly abnormal.
In truth, if he'd wanted to, he could have eaten a bit more.
"Right. Roger, wasn't it? For now, what you did to Seto—we'll call it settled with this meal."
"...My thanks."
Roger replied with an expression every bit as complicated as the customers around them.
It was true that Rei and Seto's appetite had caught him off guard, but the bill still wasn't anything he couldn't afford. As an Alchemist in his twenties, Roger took pride in earning top-tier income within Egginis—and that wasn't just bravado. It was a fact.
That confidence was precisely why his selfish behavior had been tolerated up to a point.
In that sense, all he could say was that he'd picked a fight with the wrong person.
"So, there's something I wanted to ask. About the Golems being sold here in Egginis."
That was the real reason Rei had let Roger off with nothing more than a meal, despite the man having tried to harm Seto. Normally, anyone who laid a hand on Seto would leave with a broken bone or two—and if they showed zero remorse, losing a limb wouldn't have been out of the question.
But this time, Seto had handled the situation effortlessly. And after witnessing Rei's speed firsthand, Roger had clearly recognized that he was hopelessly outmatched. Given those circumstances, Rei had kept the punishment remarkably light.
"Golems? You mean you want to buy my Golems? Unfortunately, the ones I'm currently—"
"No."
"Guh..."
He'd assumed Rei wanted his Golems, and that thought had satisfied his pride. The blunt rejection dealt a heavy blow.
"Then what? What do you want to know?"
"I heard that recently, high-performance Golems have been showing up for sale in Egginis—ones that overturn everything we thought we knew."
"!? ...So you're after that too."
Roger nearly bit out something on reflex, but caught himself and forced the words down until only that clipped reply escaped. Even that much sounded like he was barely holding back an explosion.
Rei noticed, of course, but decided that getting the information he wanted took priority over Roger's feelings. He nudged the conversation forward.
"Yeah. If I'm going to buy a Golem, might as well get a high-performance one, right? I've got money to spare."
"It's not a price some random Adventurer could afford."
At that, Rei remembered he'd only given his name. Most people would figure out who he was just from his name and Seto's presence—but Roger apparently hadn't heard of him.
"If I sold that Gryphon, maybe I could afford it... no, forget I said anything."
He might not have known the situation, but he wasn't stupid. He caught the way Rei's gaze sharpened and cut himself off mid-sentence.
Rei's expression darkened slightly, but he pulled out his Guild Card and held it up for Roger to see.
"This is... an A-Rank Adventurer!?"
The dining hall went silent in an instant.
Egginis was large enough to be called a Quasi-City, and since it functioned as an Autonomous City, it had no shortage of Adventurers. Many of those who visited were Nobles and prominent Merchants, so hiring skilled High-Rank Adventurers as escorts was common practice.
But A-Rank Adventurers were inevitably few in number. It wasn't that there were none—but it was a fact that Egginis had fewer of them than Gilm did.
Ignoring the murmur rippling through the room, Rei took his Guild Card back from Roger's hands.
"That clear things up? I can more than afford to buy a Golem. And while I'm not sure if they're usable for making them, I also happen to have monster materials from the Forest of Magic out in the Frontier."
"What!?"
Roger's head snapped up, his eyes boring into Rei with an almost feverish intensity.
Rei frowned. Given the incident with Seto, it was obvious Roger had been after some kind of material. Even so, Rei had no intention of handing anything over. Materials from the Forest of Magic were extremely rare, even back in Gilm.
He didn't need to give Roger anything here. When he went to the shop to buy a Golem, if he came up short on cash—or if he needed to commission something higher-performance—he could offer materials then.
Besides, the Golems I want are those new high-performance ones that just started showing up in Egginis.
Rei chewed on a leftover piece of food from the table as he mulled it over.
Roger broke the silence first.
"Please. Would you consider parting with those materials?"
"No."
The rejection was instant, just as Roger should have expected.
"Why not!"
Roger clearly hadn't anticipated being turned down. Why such an unreasonable refusal? He stared at Rei in disbelief.
Rei skewered another piece of meat, chewed, and then fixed Roger with a look of pure exasperation.
"Have you already forgotten why you're buying us dinner in the first place? You tried to harm Seto. I settled that with this meal, but don't mistake that for forgiveness. My opinion of you hasn't improved one bit. So what makes you think you're in any position to buy materials from me?"
Rei was willing to let things slide because Roger was a useful source of information. That was it. He didn't consider the man a friend.
"Guh... b-but with the materials available in Egginis, I can't build Golems that outperform theirs!"
Between that statement and what Lindy had told him about Roger being a skilled Alchemist, the picture clicked together.
The "their Golems" Roger means are definitely the high-performance ones that just appeared—the ones I'm after. He tried to build something better but can't with what's available in Egginis.
Since Egginis was built on Golem manufacturing, the materials needed to create them must have flowed in abundance. But the vast majority were standard components for ordinary Golems. Rare materials like what Roger was chasing didn't come easily.
And these were materials from the Forest of Magic—an area normally off-limits even within the Frontier—and from A-Rank Monsters, no less. Of course Roger would be desperate for them.
Rei understood all of that. It just wasn't his problem.
"Based on what you just said, it sounds like even you can't make those rumored high-performance Golems."
"...Of course not. Golems with that level of performance—I can't even begin to imagine how they're made. The technology behind them must be completely different from anything ever developed in Egginis."
Rei was genuinely surprised. Given everything so far, he hadn't expected Roger to admit his own technical shortcomings so frankly.
Just a little—truly just a little—Rei's internal assessment of Roger ticked upward.
Not that it had risen from negative to zero just yet.
"So you needed rare materials to catch up to that unknown technology."
"Exactly. There's no question that I possess high-level skill as an Alchemist. But the fact that their Golems still outperform mine means there's something else at play. I need to get my hands on that something. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing theirs is—it'd actually be better if I developed something uniquely my own."
From this, Rei could at least understand what was driving Roger's erratic behavior.
That said, understanding the reason didn't make what he'd done to Seto any more forgivable.
"From what I hear, you're a skilled Alchemist belonging to a sizable shop, right? Why not try negotiating some kind of trade with the group making those high-performance Golems to acquire their technique?"
"Pointless."
It had been a casual suggestion, but a perfectly reasonable one. Roger shot it down without hesitation.
"Why? ...You already tried?"
"I did. I approached them with a trade proposal. They turned me down."
Maybe that's because you came in acting like you owned the place?
Rei almost said it, but caught himself. Considering Roger's personality, it wasn't hard to imagine how that proposal had gone—condescending from start to finish.
Even if Rei could make high-performance Golems, he wouldn't want to deal with someone who swaggered in talking down to him. Of course, if the power dynamic were reversed, that would be a different conversation.
But right now, the advantage lay overwhelmingly with the ones holding the technology.
"I see. Then work on developing your own original techniques. The people who made those high-performance Golems probably did exactly that—built their own unique methods from the ground up. That's how they ended up outperforming yours."
"Guh..."
Roger fell silent. Because there wasn't a single flaw in that logic.
In Egginis, it didn't matter who you were. Establish your own technology, and you could rise to the top. In that sense, the system was fair—even the poor could climb, provided they had talent.
...Though since the bare minimum prerequisite was having the training to work with those techniques in the first place, acquiring them still required a certain financial cushion.
"But... if building new technology were that simple, I wouldn't be agonizing over it like this."
"No, you wouldn't."
New technology was a long road. Some people could leapfrog the entire process in a single bound, but while Roger was excellent, he was apparently no genius.
"So you're after rare materials because you're trying to find a way around that. Still not giving you anything from Seto, though."
Where Seto slept, there might be shed fur or fallen feathers. But considering that Roger had tried to harm him, Rei had no intention of mentioning that.