Chapter 508

Day 107 – Afternoon, the Town of Omui, Adventurers’ Guild

Day by day, more and more adventurers arrive, without waving, their number only keeps increasing.

New adventurers have always been coming to this guild without pause. By now I can’t even recall how many boys registered as adventurers, and yet, I remember their faces… because those who threw away their lives fighting monsters never came back, only a handful survived, making remembering them a very simple task in this lonely frontier guild.

「Without that daily thing in the morning, the place feels empty with so few people around. Once registration is done and beginner lessons begin, it gets so quiet.」

The guild that always had someone crying, someone regretting, someone mourning is idle, despite being busy. Adventurers keep coming, their numbers growing, so the work multiplied tenfold, receptionists and clerks have to be hired and trained. But I am only a supervisor, and this girl only does appraisals, so until evening, we have nothing to do. So without that thing in the morning, the adventurers hurry off after registration, leaving the guild silent.

The orphan children, who learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, now came to help with the paperwork. Thanks to them, the clerical work was vastly easier, quickly processing volumes of tasks, leading to the same conversation repeating again and again once the work was done.

It’s hard to believe that only a short while ago we had to frantically summon what few adventurers we could to rush as reinforcements to villages and towns under monster attack. Always behind, always too late to act, the frontier suffered loss after loss. But now, it was monsters who kept getting attacked. Now possessing sufficient numbers and proper equipment adventurers could hunt monsters in the Evil Forest and even challenge dungeons without suffering losses… It just sounds too good to be true.

The Frontier’s reborn adventurers departed to dungeons and the forest this morning too, burning with the resolve to protect it. As if they had to show their worth now, or they wouldn’t be able to call themselves adventurers. They must understand the meaning behind this equipment distributed to them cheaply by the guild, so they are enthusiastic to protect the Frontier when the boy and his companions who provided these items are absent.

「If you have nothing to do, then get back to writing the documents. There’s still a stack of unsigned forms waiting.」

「Ughhh!」

Behind the Adventurers’ Guild, there is an empty plot of land. It is the place where funerals were held for adventurers who had fallen defending the frontier. Once, it had been a place where someone was always crying. But over time, the crowds faded, and now it had become a quiet place, where flowers were laid before the memorial stone that had been erected without anyone really noticing.

Everyone came back alive. Sometimes injured, sometimes failing their quests, but alive, they returned. The guild that had once been filled with living dead, who had already given up on life even as they fought against annihilation, had transformed into a place filled with laughter, chatter, and energy.

Everything changed that day. And when we realized it, it was already over. On the day that boy appeared, with black hair and black eyes…

When we noticed it the air in the guild felt frigid. Only a few days earlier, we had a funeral for six kids that just registered. Everyone felt shackled by helplessness, their anger and frustration gnawing at them, with nothing they could do.

The dead were far too young and ill-equipped. They had promising levels above 20, previously belonging to the militia protecting their village from monsters. They had been ambushed by a pack of monsters while on a quest to cull them, surrounded and tormented to death. They had fought on as they realized they were encircled, buying time for the villagers to escape. But with weapons broken, armor and potions lacking, the boys and girls fell one after another. The villagers who survived and lost their home came to the guild to tell us their final moments. With no remains, no relics, we held their funeral.

That’s when Offta-san and his comrades, among the guild’s finest, and the guildmaster’s friends, came in, shouting in anger, storming into the guildmaster’s room. As everyone looked on in shock, a boy with black hair and black eyes walked in. Only a few days earlier, four boys with black hair and eyes had already registered, so the color itself no longer surprised us. But those eyes… were terrifying. We just had a whole group of children, miserably slaughtered, and here was a boy, only level 9, surrounded by many young girls, so veteran adventurers tried to rebuke him and drive him away… only for those hardened veterans to fall to their knees, trembling, and apologizing in fear. So terrifying were those eyes.

Only that fear had burned itself into our memories, and the days passed without us ever understanding what was so terrifying about those eyes. As if by a miracle, the Evil Forest begun growing quieter, and then that boy disappeared. That he fell, alone, into the worst Great Dungeon.

The guildmaster and the lord both swallowed their despair, knowing full well that survival was impossible, they clung to a miracle, and assembled a rescue team. In the frontier, where there is never enough manpower, they forced together what strength they could. Though it was the most dangerous of dungeons, not a single person refused the request.

Because not one of that boy’s companions had given up. The girls and boys pressed forward each day, conquering floor after floor of that worst of Dungeons, descending ever deeper in search of him. And so, none of us could abandon hope either, for the benefactor of the frontier that no one really knew, for the boy who had repelled the Evil Forest’s stampede by himself.

At last, when resources had been gathered and adventurers assembled, and plans were drafted, making establishing a base camp for the girls and boys the first goal, aiming to establish a foothold at the very least on the 30th floor and prepare to reach the hundredth, the supposed limit…

The boy was simply standing before the Dungeon. Vanished without a trace, he now reappeared just as suddenly, unchanged, as if nothing at all had happened. The implications of that were obvious, he had killed the great dungeon, the greatest threat to the frontier, all by himself, and clawed his way back from the very lowest floor. Looking into the eyes of the boy who had become a Dungeon Slayer, we finally understood the reason everyone had been so afraid that day.

He didn’t give up, this boy would never give up. That’s why we were terrified. Reflected in those eyes were our own faces. We could see in these almost crazed, as if afflicted with some curse eyes that would never accept surrender, ourselves, despairing and defeated.

After that, it was like a nightmare. Things got truly busy. No matter how much we worked, the work only multiplied, an unprecedented prosperity. The guild filled with heaps of magic stones, and merchants streaming in to buy them up. Plentiful healing mushrooms, cheap weapons and armor spread through the city, and monsters seemed to weaken as though their power was draining away. The scales that were tipped irrevocably toward ruin of the frontier suddenly reversed. What had pointed only to death now swung toward life.

And suddenly, the poor frontier became rich. Shops brimmed with goods, jobs were too many for the workers available, both the city and the frontier began flourishing at a speed we could hardly understand. Children laughed with joy, the elderly wept with happiness, while that boy came every morning to do that thing, and then went on to destroy another dungeon.

The frontier was too harsh for prayers to God, too steeped in despair to drive away misfortune. But before we knew it, the frontier that couldn’t afford to believe in miracles was living inside one, with hope scattering everywhere.

It can only be said afterward, that it was the frontier’s miracle.

It can only be said by outsiders that a miracle had come to the frontier.

For those within it, there was no understanding. The world simply changed color around us. Tears of grief became tears of joy, and by the time we realized it, it was too late(happy).

And when war came to steal that happiness away, when tragedy threatened to repeat itself, not one person in the frontier yielded. Because we knew, if we gave up, those eyes would glare at us again. After all, those eyes that refused resignation, that had endured the hell of the Dungeon’s lowest depths, had brought a miracle to the frontier.

But that boy did not permit the war either. The war was killed by the boy and his companions before it could even reach the frontier. What we had thought to be miracles became the everyday, and new miracles poured into the city one after another, the dreamlike days in actuality.

As the guild’s work grew busier and busier, the city itself became more peaceful and prosperous. The funeral grounds, no longer needed, were still adorned each day with colorful bouquets, carrying the message of the frontier’s peace to the dead. Upon the memorial stone engraved with the words 『Those Who Defended the Frontier』 flowers continued to be laid in offering to the adventurers who had given their lives until peace finally came.

「I wonder if Haruka-san and others are doing alright…」

「Of course they are. If even dungeons, even Dungeon Masters of the Great Dungeons, couldn’t kill him, then what possibly could? It’s pointless worrying. If you have time for that, use it to finish the paperwork.」

Everyone repeated the same words, over and over. How could anyone even imagine that he wouldn’t be alright? The reason the frontier, once said to contain all the continent’s disasters, had become happy, was that he had gone around and killed all of those disasters himself. What remains now are just scraps, leftovers. Of course he’s alright.

「You say that, but you keep looking at the notice board over and over? Every day, ever since Haruka-san and the others left? You’re worried, aren’t you? If being honest?」

「That’s not it, just… Why does that boy think quests from the Adventurers’ Guild are posted on the notice board in the first place?」

Normally, the guild takes requests from clients, adjusts the schedule, and assigns them to suitable adventurers, that is the work of the guild. Why would we just post them on a board? If everything were simply stuck up there, the guild wouldn’t be needed, and adventurers would end up fighting over jobs.

「Permanent requests never change after all, well, almost?」

「And yet, he comes every day to check. Every single day… Anyone else would notice by now, wouldn’t they?」

The black-haired companions said nothing, and since no one asked, others stayed silent too, but the truth was obvious, those were leftover permanent requests, always posted, which didn’t even need the guild’s introduction to be accepted. Still, each day he came to look, and each day he complained that nothing had changed. And so, everyone watched on, bemused, as this became part of the frontier’s daily life.

Somehow, it became the natural way to start the morning. Without it, everyone felt off balance. I wish he wouldn’t spread such odd customs… And yet, because of it, the entire town felt unable to submit new permanent requests, or even adjust prices. And so, the notice board became frozen, unchanging.

Ever since the day that miracle came, it has stayed exactly the same. The notice board that never changes.