The buzz of a crowd.
"Noisy in here."
"Still beats that mountain we were in last time by a mile."
The Laican Domain in the empire's northeast, and Laican, the great city that serves as its capital. Ran and Moor had taken a table in one of its restaurants. The whole place was fitted out in wood.
Calling it a restaurant was generous; in practice it was no different from a tavern.
"Ran, I thought you disliked loud, crowded places. So why did you want to come here?"
Moor raised the question, given that the one grumbling about the noise was the one who had insisted on the place.
"Just wait."
Ran ignored the question entirely, his eyes moving between the counter and the waitstaff.
"Your food."
A server came over and set the dish on the table.
"Meat pie? That's the reason?"
"Yeah. I've wanted to try it at least once."
That said, Ran snatched up his fork and knife. Moor watched how Ran ate to confirm the method, then started in on the meat pie himself.
"There it is!"
"Oh! Worth putting up with the noise."
The instant they tasted it, Ran and Moor were both won over. Moor alternated between his drink and the pie; Ran didn't so much as lift his head, wolfing down pie and nothing else.
"How did you even hear about a place like this?"
Moor smiled and asked it of Ran, who had all but inhaled his food.
"I worked with someone from the Laican Domain once. Heard about it then. He said if I ever came here, I had to eat it."
"Ah! I see......" Moor didn't bother asking whether the person who recommended the place was still alive.
"So what is it this time?"
"Want another one first?"
"Mm... yeah!"
Seeing that Ran had already finished a whole pie, Moor ordered a second.
"This time we've agreed to help Trier — one of the major guilds."
"What?"
Ran, who until then had been diligently tormenting a salad with his fork, looked up in surprise.
Moor noted the displeasure in his reaction and drew the Order's envelope from his coat.
"What is it this time? Recovering some item, wiping out bandits, monster hunting, that sort of thing?"
Ran made no secret of disliking anything unrelated to Sages.
Moor watched him with an amused smile, pulling the letter out of the Order's envelope as he did.
"Hm... what do you think major guilds usually do?"
"What I just listed. Isn't that all of it?"
Ran answered Moor's question.
"Oh dear, the little paladin doesn't know the first thing about how the world works."
Moor was about to say something when a man at the next table cut in.
The man had a sharp, striking nose and looked like an adventurer.
He seemed to have a little drink in him. Instead of answering, Moor slipped the letter back into his coat.
"Running errands for private clients — you think that's how a super-guild like Trier got to be what it is? Not a chance."
"Then how?"
Moor played along, as if genuinely interested in what the man had barged in to say.
Meanwhile a second meat pie arrived, and Ran began eating it, uninterested in the conversation.
"They contract with the domain's high and mighty, or with the Imperial Army out northeast, and get paid."
"Ohh! And what sort of contracts?"
Moor gestured with real curiosity as he asked.
"They help with everything. Always have. Under imperial law, the lord of a domain can't keep more than fifty thousand private soldiers, bodyguards included."
A balding man from somewhere else in the room answered in his stead.
"So can order be kept with that alone? Even counting the Imperial Army, it's a stretch. And on top of that the two of them are busy watching each other..."
"Not just that. The domains' masters — the great houses, that is — are locked in power struggles with each other, too."
"You think humans are the only problem? So the dragons are gone, what of it? The servants made from a dragon's blood and flesh — the monsters — are still out there running wild."
"And all sorts of other messy business besides."
Once one man spoke, every adventurer in the place seemed to want to add a line of his own.
"There are far too many problems for the Imperial Army and a lord's private soldiers to solve, so they pay the guilds and ask for help."
With the room backing him up, the man who had first spoken to Ran and Moor grew even more animated.
"Every guild is good at different things, but whatever you need, they'll do it! Extra manpower, supply support, training your soldiers, and so on... you've only got to ask!"
By now the drunk man had turned away from Moor entirely and was shouting it at the room.
"These days it's adventurers who protect this empire! There's a reason they call us the heirs of the hero Marcel!"
The drink had him raising his voice.
"Ohhh!"
"Hey, that sounds pretty good when you put it like that. Damn right!"
Some cheered him on; others laughed quietly, embarrassed for him.
Nearly everyone in the place was an adventurer, and the mood had climbed high on the man's words.
"Bullshit. You're a pack of thugs nobody else will take. Heirs of the hero, my... what? Talking absolute crap."
Ran spat it out, still eating his meat pie.
"......"
"......"
"Pfft."
His voice hadn't been loud at all, and yet somehow it pulled every eye in the room.
A beat of pure silence. And, here and there, snorts of laughter.
The mood had gone cold in an instant, and Moor put a hand to his head.
BANG—!
Just as Moor was thinking they were done for, the adventurer who had spoken to them slammed the table where he and Ran sat.
"Our little paladin here has no fear at all."
The man glared threateningly at Ran, who was still focused entirely on his meat pie.
"Ahh... my apologies. Our boy is just talking, so please don't take it too..."
BANG—!
"...Oh, no."
The moment Moor started apologizing, the adventurer grabbed Ran roughly by the shoulder where he sat. Ran bent the man's arm and put him on the floor.
Some of the onlookers cheered loudly and settled in, thoroughly entertained.
"You little—!"
The adventurer shot to his feet, ready to make a real threat of it.
"Hey! If you're going to fight, take it outside!"
Just then a colossally built man came walking out from the back of the shop, shouting. He carried a presence that could smother the mood of the whole room.
That one line settled a situation that had been about to blow wide open.
"That goes for you too, boy. Most of the people who use this place are adventurers or guild members. Mind your words."
"Yes, understood. I'll see he's more careful."
The owner had warned Ran too, and Moor answered for him.
Instead of a reply, Ran pulled a sullen face. The owner nodded to Moor to say the matter was closed and left.
"Right, keep going with what you were saying."
Once the owner had stepped away, Ran turned back to Moor. But Moor shook his head.
"Thanks to you we've got the room's attention. They may not be looking, but their ears are open."
When Moor told him that his little scene had made further talk here impossible, Ran stuck out his lip.
They finished their food in a hurry and headed for a nearby inn, as good as chased out.
It was dark by then, and the two of them walked along the river by the light of the streetlamps, as they had the last time.
"On the surface, we're helping the guild that commissioned us clean out an illegal guild."
Moor explained it with the Order's letter in his hand.
"Wiping out illegal guilds is the Imperial Army's job, isn't it? So why Trier Guild?"
Ran raised the point that puzzled him.
"That's the Far East War's doing. Most of the imperial troops handling public order have been fed into the war, and it's left holes."
Moor explained, and with the hand not holding the letter drew a cigarette and set it between his lips.
"Mind you, this illegal guild took aim at exactly that gap."
"What have they done?"
"Let's see... robbed a gold mine, smashed a small guild, and now they're openly dealing narcotics."
Moor answered while looking closely at the Order's envelope.
"They've located every one of the guild's bases — they simply don't have the manpower."
Moor said it as he ran his eyes over the Order's letter again.
"So? What does any of this have to do with a Sage?"
By then they had arrived at the hotel where they were staying. Moor confirmed at reception which room the Order had booked and collected the key.
"Originally they meant to raid the illegal guild's hideout with the imperial troops they had left. But two variables came up."
Moor and Ran went up by the stairs. They climbed to the third floor, where Moor checked the room number and opened the door with the key he'd been given.
"The first is a powerful telekinetic. On their first raid they didn't know he existed, and it cost them a great many casualties. As you know, in a straight field fight with no groundwork laid, a telekinetic has an overwhelming advantage over any other sorcerer."
The moment he was in the room, Moor used a detection sorcery to check it over.
"You mean that telekinetic might be a Sage?"
"Well... he might, he might not. He could just be a user of remains, like last time."
"What?! So it's another maybe?"
Ran, who had dumped his luggage and coat in the room, spoke sharply.
Moor gave a small smile, as if the reaction amused him.
"The problem is the second variable. The quality of the guild's forces."
Knowing full well Ran was about to get irritated, Moor moved quickly to the next part.
"Word is the illegal guild's people drank an orange potion mid-fight and suddenly became overwhelmingly strong. On top of that, every one of them carried weapons made of rare metal — and the ordinary steel the imperial troops and guild members carried couldn't hold up against it."
"Huh?"
Having heard the whole explanation, Ran gave Moor a look that said, 'And that means what to me?'
Rare metal.
A metal found originally only in the deserts of the empire's south. It is so hard that a plain iron weapon stands no chance against one made of it.
But the quantity is so precious and scarce that both the refining method and the craftsmen who knew it are said to have died out.
"That one potion made them overwhelmingly strong is a problem in itself, but that many people armed with rare metal makes no sense either. A metal that rare and that difficult to work... And yet — if a Sage-class alchemist is supplying them, every bit of it is explained."
Ran's face lit up as he heard it through.
"We catch the Sage backing the illegal guild. That's why we're taking part in this raid."