"R-Rei-san. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was a bit tied up, you see."
Inside a room within the administrative building, Robel bowed his head as he spoke.
He probably wanted to meet Rei as soon as possible, but he clearly had no shortage of other work demanding his attention.
"Well, seeing the officials working so frantically, I can't exactly complain. ...More importantly, it's just you and Orban? What about Dwanda?"
Robel was the only one in the room.
But Rei could sense Orban hiding somewhere inside.
Maruka and Nicky, who had guided Rei this far, were waiting outside—that was precisely why Rei had dropped the name. Sure enough, Orban emerged from behind a shelf the next moment.
"You saw through my hiding too, huh? ...Dwanda-san is undergoing treatment right now. Apparently, he also needs to give various instructions to his subordinates on top of that. He should come once that's sorted out."
"...Various, huh."
Rei had a general idea of what "various" entailed in this context.
Egginis was in considerable turmoil due to the Necro Golem incident. But as those who governed the city, Robel and the others naturally had to plan for the aftermath as well.
It wasn't difficult to guess that Dwanda's current absence was related to exactly that.
Rei's gaze shifted to Robel.
"Wh-What is it?"
Robel looked bewildered under the scrutiny.
"Nothing. Just—Dwanda is out there getting things done even as we speak, but is it really alright for you to be here settling the commotion, Robel? Before you know it, Dwanda might snatch up all of Dailas's and Lusitania's interests."
"I-I wouldn't worry about that. D-Dwanda-san isn't that reckless."
"I'd agree with Robel on that one. Even if Dwanda-san were plotting something, I don't think it would succeed. ...More to the point, the very possibility of him doing such a thing is slim to none."
Orban chimed in, backing up Robel's words.
Rei considered saying something in response, but if they were confident there were no issues despite knowing how Dwanda operated, there was no need for him to interject unnecessarily.
"If you two are fine with it, then I won't press the matter. Anyway, as an initial report—the Necro Golem has been defeated. I burned it at a location fairly far from Egginis, but the area is still in a state that can fittingly be called a scorching hell. Confirming the corpse... or rather, the remains? Either way, I think it will take a bit more time."
"...I already know, but I'll ask just in case. The temperature around this entire area suddenly spiked a while ago—that wasn't your doing, was it, Rei?"
"Exactly what Orban said. I can't help but think it's pointless to ask a question when you already know the answer."
Orban shot Rei a look of exasperation, while Robel stared in astonishment.
"That's the Crimson alias on full display, I take it?"
"Is that a compliment?"
"To be precise, it's half exasperation and half surprise. ...You'd understand if you looked at Egginis right now. They're doing debris removal work in the middle of a sudden heat spike. If not for that, they could have worked far more comfortably."
"Even so. The opponent was that Necro Golem, you know? A creature that scatters rot fluid and fills the entire area with poison smoke if you attack it carelessly. To defeat something like that, burning the rot fluid and poison smoke along with it was the best option."
Orban looked as though he wanted to argue, but having witnessed the Necro Golem's rot fluid and poison smoke firsthand, he couldn't refute Rei's logic.
If anything, imagining what would have happened in the city without Rei, even with a sudden temperature spike, one could understand that this was the best possible outcome.
"N-Now, about that. I-If Rei-san hadn't been here, the damage Egginis suffered would have been far more catastrophic."
Robel interjected to mediate, but it was an undeniable fact.
What would have become of the Necro Golem if Rei hadn't been there?
The Necro Golem's rampage had been triggered by the Dolan Workshop incident, which happened because Rei got involved. If Rei hadn't been there, the Dolan Workshop's crimes would never have come to light—but at the same time, Egginis would never have suffered this kind of damage either.
In that sense, one could call Rei the cause of this turmoil.
For Orban and Robel, it was a delicate question whether to resent Rei's arrival for bringing such chaos to Egginis, or to rejoice that his presence had exposed the hidden crimes.
"That's right. It's certainly true that things worked out only because Rei was here. ...Ah, right. I almost forgot to mention this. There was an adventurer named Golias—the one Rei... or rather, Lindy, was searching for, right?"
Rei twitched. Given that Golias's name had come up in this situation, that was only natural.
"He was found?"
"Yeah. He was discovered confined inside the Dolan Workshop."
"...Inside the Dolan Workshop? The place where the illegal slaves were held was... no, come to think of it, there was a fork in the path on the way there. So Golias was on the side I didn't take. Have you notified Lindy?"
"Already done. She's probably heading to where Golias is right now."
"So why was Golias imprisoned in the Dolan Workshop? The fact that he was kept somewhere separate from Anne and the others—those who were made into illegal slaves—means he wasn't intended as a sacrifice for the necromancy ritual, right?"
"Probably not. We haven't heard the details yet, but apparently he was severely emaciated. Given only the bare minimum of water and food. When they found him, he was skin and bones."
"Skin and bones, huh. From what I heard, Golias was supposed to be a heavily muscled, large man."
What exactly the Dolan Workshop had been doing by imprisoning Golias was beyond Rei's understanding. But for a heavily muscled large man to be reduced to skin and bones, one had to wonder what they had been subjecting him to.
Then again, considering that Ilunara—an alchemist from the Dolan Workshop's Non-Mainstream Faction—knew nothing about it, what they had been doing didn't require much imagination.
"At any rate, he's safe and sound. Given what they were doing over there, his survival was lucky."
At Orban's murmured words, Rei nodded in agreement.
Given that Golias had been held captive by the Dolan Workshop, which used human souls as materials for necromancy, the fact that he was alive held tremendous significance.
"Have you not heard from Golias himself what was done to him?"
"That's difficult. Apparently, he was in a state where he could barely speak. They said he managed to say his own name, but that was about it."
"That's certainly... If Ilunara hears the details, I have a feeling it could cause quite a bit of trouble. That said, in this Dolan Workshop incident, there were people like Ilunara and his group who knew nothing, right?"
"We haven't done a detailed interrogation yet, so I can't say for certain, but I believe that's the case. ...However, I think the number of those who did know will also be considerable."
"Th-This is where the real problem lies. N-Now that the Dolan Workshop has come to this, there's no doubt it will become a major issue in many ways. E-Egginis will most likely have its autonomy stripped away, I'd imagine."
Robel said as much, but he didn't look nearly as grave as his words suggested. Well, he always appeared restless, so perhaps this was close to his usual demeanor.
"Autonomy, huh. But if you're going to keep running Egginis together with Dwanda... or rather, with his successor going forward, it's bound to be quite tough, isn't it? The country won't just send some unreasonable replacement out of nowhere, I'd think."
"I-I suppose it would be nice if you just became the lord of Egginis, Rei-san."
"Huh?"
The words that came out of Robel's mouth were completely unexpected for Rei. A dumbfounded sound slipped from his lips—and from Orban's as well.
"Me, a lord? How would that even happen? Me, governing a city? That's impossible."
"A-As for the politics, you wouldn't have to handle that yourself, Rei-san—you could just leave it to your subordinates. Wh-What matters is the achievement of having defeated the Necro Golem. I-If something like this were to happen again, having someone with the power to handle it would be hugely significant."
Robel's tone didn't sound like he was half-joking. He sounded dead serious. At least, that was how it looked from Rei's perspective.
Naturally, Rei had absolutely no intention of doing anything like that.
"I don't know if you're serious or joking, but I'll say this just in case. I have no intention of becoming a noble, nor do I plan to make Egginis my base. My base is, and will remain, Gilm."
For Rei, Gilm was like a second hometown. No—having come to Elgin with no way back to Japan, Gilm was without a doubt his only hometown.
Beyond that, the fact that it was a frontier held tremendous significance for him. Because it was a frontier, there were unknown monsters, and through their magic stones, he could strengthen Seto and Death Scythe. The proximity to the Forest of Magic was also a major factor.
...Of course, entry into the Forest of Magic was generally prohibited without special permission from the lord or the Guild. It wasn't as though someone stood guard preventing people from entering, so in Rei and Seto's case, they could simply fly through the sky and enter without issue. But the Forest of Magic was home to powerful monsters—many that even Rei and Seto would struggle against—so he couldn't just head there casually.
On top of that, because it was a frontier, various special materials and monster meat were also in wide circulation. In Gilm, Orc meat was one of the more common meats. But that too was a sight unique to the frontier. Orcs did appear in places beyond the frontier as well, but in terms of sheer numbers, the frontier had overwhelmingly more.
"I-I see. Th-That's a shame."
Judging from Rei's demeanor, Robel concluded there was no way they could make him the lord of Egginis, and showed every bit of the disappointment his words conveyed.
(I can't tell if he was serious or joking... but if he was serious, that would have been quite troublesome.)
Rei hadn't given becoming a lord a single thought. He didn't think he could pull off something like that, and above all, considering the current state of this administrative building, he had no desire whatsoever to take on the role.
Even if he delegated the actual politics to subordinates, it was easy to imagine the obligations that would remain—socializing among nobles, documents that could only be approved by a lord, and so on.
Rather than bother with all that, acting as an adventurer suited Rei's nature far better. When he was short on money, he could take requests at the Guild, defeat monsters and sell their materials, or go bandit hunting. Without the burdens of a lord, he only had to think about his own actions—no, since he was currently in a party, he only had to consider responsibility for himself and his companions.
In that sense, being an adventurer suited Rei's nature.
If he were an ordinary person, he would have needed to plan for life after he could no longer work as an adventurer. But fortunately, Rei's aging was remarkably slow. That much was obvious from the fact that several years had passed since he came to this world, and he hadn't grown at all.
It was his own body, but he didn't understand what was going on with it. There were no survivors of the Zephyle Clan anymore, and when it came to those who knew about the clan, there was only Grimm, an Undead.
Even Grimm, in life, had been merely one of those who admired the Zephyle Clan. He probably knew the rumors, but he wouldn't know anything about Rei's body, which could be called top-secret information.
(I'll just have to think about that sort of thing as time goes on, I suppose.)
Thus, Rei thought to himself casually.