The discussion in Ridon's room was still ongoing.
As for dinner, Ridon had his subordinate—the butler Rei had met before—bring food from the dining hall. Normally, guests at an inn ate either in the dining hall or went out, but the Star River Inn, being a high-class establishment, could naturally bring dishes from the kitchen to a room upon request.
The meal thus prepared was likely an unexpected windfall for Lindy. As someone from an orphanage who sent most of her request earnings back home, her financial situation was quite tight. For someone like Lindy to enjoy a meal at an inn where only nobles and successful merchants could afford to stay was a rare treat indeed.
"It's delicious... this is really delicious."
What she brought to her mouth was soup. But it was no ordinary soup—it contained an abundance of fresh seafood, ingredients difficult to obtain in Egginis, a city far from the sea. It was a masterpiece; a single sip flooded the palate with the rich flavors of the sea.
"This is... a decadent seafood soup."
Lindy's murmur was entirely understandable. It was the kind of soup that made one want to keep drinking it forever.
(Udon... no, would pasta suit it better? Then again, I don't know how to make pasta, so if I tried, it would end up as udon.)
Rei was convinced that the soup, with its robust seafood flavor, would be delicious with pasta added. But since he didn't know how to make pasta, any noodle he added would have to be udon. If rice were available, he might have thought of something like zosui or risotto, but unfortunately, he had never seen rice in this world.
Thinking such thoughts, he dipped freshly baked bread into the soup and ate. Originally, dipping bread into soup was a known method for softening hardened loaves or bread baked hard from the start for preservation. But even with fresh bread... no, precisely because it was fresh, it could instantly absorb the soup. Alternatively, eaten together with the fish and clam meat that served as the soup's toppings, one could enjoy the soft sweetness of the bread alongside the flavor of the toppings, which retained their umami remarkably well despite being cooked into the soup.
"Hoh, I see... they boiled seafood to flavor the broth, then added lightly cooked seafood back in as toppings. What a luxurious soup," Maruka remarked as she enjoyed hers.
Having been raised as a noble, she was naturally well-educated in all matters of dining. For even Maruka to approve, the inn's cuisine had clearly passed the test.
Once the meal was over, the topic returned to Rei's situation.
"Wouldn't it be faster to just attack and crush the organization sending the assassins?"
"I understand your perspective, Rei, but the problem is how we find that organization in the first place."
Ridon voiced his opposition to Rei's push for a quick resolution. However, Rei's gaze turned to Roger and Lindy.
"Roger and Lindy, you both live in Egginis. Do you know anything about them?"
People who came from outside like Ridon, Maruka, and Nicky might not be well-informed about such matters, but Roger and Lindy, who actually lived in Egginis, might have some leads. That was what Rei thought as he asked—but the first to shake her head was Lindy.
"I don't know anything about that. I'm just an ordinary adventurer with no connections to the underworld. I don't take those kinds of requests either."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. To begin with, the Guild won't accept truly dangerous requests, and even if suspicious ones came up, I have no intention of taking them."
Her firm declaration stemmed from her circumstances—the need to send money to the orphanage. Requests tied to the underworld could sometimes yield extremely high compensation, but that amount was precisely because of the danger. High-risk, high-reward existed; low-risk, high-reward... well, it wasn't entirely nonexistent, but such cases were exceedingly rare. Conversely, high-risk, low-reward situations were everywhere. At any rate, Lindy could not tolerate the idea of receiving a large sum only to be targeted by someone afterward. Worst case, the orphanage could be used as a hostage against her.
When Lindy explained this, Rei and the others nodded in understanding... and then their gazes turned to Roger.
From Rei's perspective, Roger was the more promising lead compared to Lindy. Roger was a skilled alchemist even within Egginis. Given that, it wouldn't be surprising for him to have connections to the underworld.
"That's right, it's not that I have no leads. However, it's not that I directly know such places—rather, I know someone who would likely know such people."
"You don't know yourself?"
Roger opened his mouth with an expression of disbelief at Rei's words, which seemed to imply he thought Roger would have known.
"There's no way I would know such shady people. What do you take me for?"
"The man who attacked Seto the moment he saw him and tried to make him his own."
"Gu..."
At Rei's instant retort, Roger fell silent. If this were one of Rei's made-up stories, it would be one thing, but the adventurer guards had actually tried to attack Seto and been met with a counterattack, resulting in their defeat. The injuries from that incident had been severe enough that different adventurers had been hired as guards until they healed.
"Come to think of it, what happened to the guards Seto defeated? I don't think their injuries were that serious—have they fully recovered by now?"
"Ah. They've returned to their posts as my guards. Though since the Star River Inn is safe, they're waiting outside with the carriage."
"Safe... huh."
As someone who had been attacked by an assassin disguised as a maid at this very inn, Rei couldn't simply nod at the word "safe." That said, security had been tightened since the incident, so Roger's assessment was by no means wrong.
"Setting aside Roger's guards, who's the guy that knows about the organization that sent the assassins?"
"My guard. Unlike Lindy, he's apparently accepted all sorts of shady requests in the past. He once hinted at something regarding that."
The phrase "darkness beneath the lamp" was hardly an exaggeration in this case. At any rate, since the person who knew was right outside the Star River Inn, there was no reason to leave him waiting—he was called in immediately.
"Um, well... why was I brought here, Roger-san?"
One of the guards who was brought in, a man introduced as Rugana, asked his employer with a bewildered expression. He seemed confused by the suddenness of it all, but perhaps because Roger's presence and the general atmosphere made clear that he wasn't being reprimanded for some failure, he was bewildered yet showed no signs of fear.
"Previously, Rugana, you said you knew about an assassin organization, didn't you?"
"Huh? Oh. Though I should say, I don't know the details. If I did, the organization would be targeting me instead."
"In other words, you only know about it through rumors. ...Well, that's fine. Tell us what you can. If we trace those rumors, we might be able to find the organization's location."
"...Are you serious?"
At Rei's words, Rugana asked with evident surprise. From Rugana's perspective, what Rei was suggesting—going to the location of an assassin organization himself—seemed like nothing short of suicide. Entrusted as a guard for Roger, a capable alchemist, Rugana had considerable skill of his own. He had challenged Seto alongside comrades and lost, but that was solely because his opponent was a gryphon. If he fought Lindy, for instance, he was confident he could win all ten out of ten mock battles. No matter how much luck was on Lindy's side, she might lose one at most. That was about the extent of it. ...Of course, he didn't think he could beat Nicky, either.
Rugana possessed that level of skill, but going to an assassin organization himself—let alone attacking one—was something he had absolutely no desire to do. No, he understood that doing so at his level of ability would mean certain death. That was precisely why he asked Rei if he was serious. He asked "Are you serious?" precisely because the person before him was Rei. Had it been anyone else, he might well have asked, "Are you out of your mind?"
That was how terrifying the Assassin Guild was.
But Rei nodded readily at Rugana's words.
"I'm serious. Don't worry—I've fought and defeated countless assassins, and I've destroyed assassin guilds before. Compared to the ones who attacked me in the Bestia Empire, Egginis's assassins aren't opponents I need to be that wary of."
Rei's words carried overwhelming confidence. Hearing them, one could feel with certainty that what he was saying was no bluff. In terms of appearance, he was smaller than Rugana, but the ability behind it was undeniably real. That much was obvious looking at the man who held the alias of Crimson, operated as an A-Rank Adventurer... and above all, had Seto—a tamed monster that had overwhelmed Rugana and his comrades utterly—as his companion. Saying so directly to Rei's face, however, was something Rugana simply could not bring himself to do.
"Understood. Still... I don't think you need to worry if it's Rei-san, but please, at least keep it a secret that I was the one who leaked this information."
From Rugana's perspective, he couldn't help but wonder what would happen if Rei attacked the guild and failed. If he succeeded, there would be no problem at all. But if he failed... worst case, the possibility that assassins would be sent after him in retaliation couldn't be denied.
In response to Rugana's request, Rei nodded without hesitation. Revealing the source of this kind of information to others would go against adventurer ethics. More than that, Rei had no intention of failing. Rugana might find it unbelievable, but Rei had annihilated numerous underground organizations in the past. For someone like him, recognizing that enemies of this caliber posed no threat was only natural.
(Well, the carriage ramming was a bit unexpected, I'll admit.)
Rei had fought many assassins before, but that particular attack had caught him quite off guard. It was definitely more troublesome than the assassin who had disguised herself as a maid and infiltrated the Star River Inn. In reality, the maid-disguised assassin hadn't even managed to scratch him. The one who charged with the carriage hadn't wounded him either, but that was largely thanks to the Dragon Robe. Without it, Rei would have been cut by the short dagger the assassin carried—a dagger likely coated with poison. And upon judging the assassination a failure, the man had immediately taken his own life to prevent any information from being extracted. That swiftness conveyed a resolve to discard one's own life to kill the enemy, and to die instantly if the kill failed.
That said, such resolve was something Rei could by no means tolerate. It wasn't about the sanctity of human life; in this case, the inability to obtain information was the far greater issue.
As a result, they ended up relying on Rugana's information, but even that didn't reveal the exact location of the Assassin Guild—it was merely a rumor about roughly which area the guild operated in. Rei needed to find the Assassin Guild reliably before destroying it. That said, he had no intention of calling off the operation. After all, there was a high probability that some kind of clue remained at the guild's stronghold. Especially if the rumors about the Dolan Workshop were true, there might be evidence that the Workshop had commissioned Rei's assassination. Even if someone other than the Dolan Workshop was the mastermind, the possibility that some clue had been left behind couldn't be denied.