"Where are we going now, Uncle?"
Leo asked, holding tight to his uncle's hand.
In Leo's hand was a fruit skewer Alex had bought him. Of course, Alex had taken a bite of it first.
[The fruit here isn't very sweet.]
[Somebody needs to work on the varieties.]
Letting Two Hundred's incomprehensible words slide past with practiced ease, Alex answered.
"We're going to the mercenary guild. Your uncle is going to become a mercenary."
"A mercenary! I want to do it too!"
At Leo's sparkling eyes, Alex smiled and stroked his head.
"Let's do it later, when you're as big as your uncle."
"Can I really get as big as you, Uncle?"
To Leo, his uncle had always been a large and amazing being. And he could become like that too? It was astonishing.
"Our Leo is going to become even more splendid and amazing than your uncle."
That was a natural and certain future.
"Though you're already a really good and wonderful child now."
"Hehehe."
At his uncle's praise, Leo's cheeks flushed red with embarrassment and he laughed.
[Sob, sob.]
[How is a person without a nephew supposed to bear this?]
Smiling faintly at Two Hundred's words, Alex took Leo and headed for where the mercenary guild was.
"What kind of place is the mercenary guild, Uncle?"
At that Alex thought for a moment.
The mercenary guild of the 'future' had used a large three-story building because of the flood of refugees and the mercenaries who came from other regions.
'Plenty of people coming and going, and noisy.'
When he had gone to register as a mercenary for the first time with the 'sixteen-year-old Leo,' the chaos had been beyond words.
But that was the 'future.'
Now it was different.
Alex called up an old memory.
"It's a two-story building, but it isn't very large."
It was a quiet sort of place that gave off every impression of a rural mercenary branch.
"I see!"
After walking a little while, Alex and Leo arrived at their destination.
"Right. This is how it used to be."
Looking at the small mercenary guild building before him, Alex muttered. The sight, exactly as he remembered it, felt both new and dearly missed.
"Leo, this is the mercenary guild."
[It's extremely ordinary?]
"Whoa!"
Just as Two Hundred said, it was a building with nothing special about it, and yet Leo gazed at it with shining eyes.
Alex stroked Leo's head and took hold of the mercenary guild's door handle.
Creeeak—
They did not seem to be fixing the broken door, because a sharp sound came from it.
Inside the mercenary guild there were a few mercenaries along with a receptionist.
The moment he saw Alex, the receptionist, Wilbur, said,
"There's nothing."
At that Leo looked up at Alex with a puzzled gaze, but Alex was wearing a bewildered expression too.
"No word has come in, and no letter has arrived. And there's been no contact."
...Ah!
At Wilbur's continued words, Alex realized.
The pre-regression Alex, during the five years his sister and brother-in-law had been missing, had come to the mercenary guild every time he stopped by the lord's castle to check whether a letter or message had arrived.
For a boy raising a baby, that had been the best method available.
'I'd forgotten.'
Alex smiled bitterly.
"That's not what I came for today."
Five years already.
Wilbur, who had been speaking coldly on purpose in the hope that Alex would give up by now, only then looked at Alex properly.
He noticed Leo beside him as well.
Golden hair and sky-blue eyes.
Anyone could see he was Serena and Glick's son.
'Wilbur, be good to my little brother when he comes.'
From the time Serena and Alex settled in the Kaldis domain until five years ago.
Wilbur, who had always passed on the letters whenever Serena went off to work, could not help but let out a low groan.
"So what did you come for?"
At Wilbur's considerably softened voice, Alex smiled faintly and stepped up to the reception desk.
Leo, who had been quiet for a while, must have noticed the atmosphere ease, because he began looking around the mercenary guild with a curious face.
[Do they sell food here?]
[Like a mercenary special.]
As if they would.
Ignoring Two Hundred's words, Alex spoke.
"I'd like to become a mercenary."
"...A mercenary?"
Wilbur looked at Alex with a strange gaze.
'Mercenary work after the letters, is it.'
He could understand it.
Wasn't this the boy who had come every time to hear news of his sister and brother-in-law? He had grown quite a bit, so becoming a mercenary to look for them himself was only natural.
"Will you be all right? Mercenary work isn't that easy."
Wilbur wondered what a twenty-year-old young man who had been a farmer could do.
It might be a painful thing, but forgetting his sister and brother-in-law and raising his nephew might have been the better choice for Alex.
"I'll be all right."
But Alex's expression as he said it was resolute, so Wilbur could only sigh and nod.
"Right. Just like Serena's brother. You know about the mercenary grades?"
"Yes."
"I'll explain them once more anyway."
Mercenaries started at 6th grade and went up to 1st grade, and from 2nd grade up, one had to take and pass an examination to rise to a higher grade.
"If you betray a client or commit a crime, wanted posters will go up at every mercenary guild branch on the continent, so be careful."
[The mercenary system on this side is pretty thorough too.]
Two Hundred said, listening with interest, while Leo simply rolled his eyes about, apparently not following all of it.
"That won't happen."
"Just fill this out. The registration fee is 1 silver."
Alex handed over 1 silver and then filled out the paper Wilbur held out.
"For the mercenary examination, you just have to complete one of the 6th grade commissions. Pick from among these."
Easy 6th grade commission forms — herb gathering, animal hunting, things that were not urgent and could be taken repeatedly — were spread out on the reception desk.
[Extremely easy.]
Naturally.
If the examination were hard, who would become a mercenary?
But there were those who left even an easy examination like this behind because it was a bother or too much work.
"What I'd recommend is the herb gathering. The time allowance is generous and the habitat isn't far, so you can take the child along."
Perhaps because he knew Leo was there, Wilbur recommended the easiest commission. His words seemed a little cold, but he was a kind receptionist.
It was while Alex was listening about the herbs he was to gather.
Dong— dong—!
A bell in the lord's castle rang at a steady rhythm.
[What is it? What's going on?]
[It sounds just like an emergency alert notification?]
[Is it monsters? Bandits? Don't tell me... a dragon?!]
As if a dragon would come to a country place like this.
"Did something happen, Uncle?"
Leo, who had never heard a bell like this, grew a little frightened and clung tightly to Alex's leg. Alex stroked his head.
"It's all right, little one."
At that, Wilbur spoke as though it were nothing much.
"This is a bell that rings when the lord's castle is invaded or something serious happens, but ringing slowly like this means it isn't much of a matter."
"At this rate, has a lowest-grade dungeon appeared?"
"A new dungeon, is it? Should we take a look? There might be monsters worth money."
The mercenaries inside the mercenary guild talked without any particular tension either.
"If it's about lowest-grade, the soldiers will take care of it, so it's fine, Leo."
"Yeah!"
Just then, someone came into the mercenary guild and said,
"They say a dungeon formed in front of the south gate. It's lowest-grade."
"Lowest-grade as expected. I wonder what monsters come out."
"But in front of the south gate?"
Wilbur's and the mercenaries' eyes grew a little more serious.
[The south gate — isn't that where we came in?]
"Uncle, that's where Mister Kane was, right?"
Two Hundred and Leo both realized where the south gate was.
"There'd be a lot of people there, wouldn't there? And a dungeon formed there?"
"Yes. Everyone standing at the entrance was sucked into the dungeon. The soldiers too."
[Oh. If we'd arrived a day later we'd nearly have been sucked into a dungeon.]
The mercenary drank a cup of water someone gave him and went on.
"On top of that, they say the young lord happened to be passing nearby and got caught up in it too. So the soldiers are gathering now to mount a rescue."
"And mercenaries?"
"They say it's a lowest-grade dungeon, so soldiers are enough?"
Wilbur and the other mercenaries nodded as though they understood.
Only one.
Only Alex stood there with a hardened face.
'The dungeon formed today?'
The south gate dungeon.
That was the corrupted dungeon the 'Hero Leo' had gone into in the 'future.'
'It was lowest-grade, but one of the goblins inside had turned into a lower-middle-grade demonic beast that used magic.'
A difference of two whole grades.
So it was impossible for soldiers or mercenaries to defeat the monsters and the demonic beast while protecting the domain's people.
A knight was needed.
And one with experience fighting a mage, at that.
'They took it lightly thinking it was a lowest-grade dungeon, and everyone who was sucked in first and everyone who went to rescue them died.'
The young lord and the people who had been sucked in, and the soldiers now going to rescue them, were all certain to die.
'Should I go and save them?'
Alex agonized.
He had planned to stop corrupted dungeons for Leo's happiness, but that was a plan for after he had grown stronger.
The only magic Alex could use now was 「Fire」 and 「Fireball」. And he had learned only the true basics of swordsmanship.
'....'
Many lives were at stake, but Alex could not move carelessly.
"Uncle?"
He had Leo.
If he threw his life away trying to save other people, what would become of the Leo left behind?
'My goal is Leo's happiness.'
They could call it selfish and cowardly if they liked.
Alex did not want to repeat the 'future.'
"Fortunately the herb gathering is in the western area. Stay away from the south for a while."
Saying that, Wilbur told Alex about the herbs he was to gather.
"...Yes. Understood."
Alex opened a heavy mouth to answer.
[Shame.]
[If it's a lowest-grade dungeon, that's an F-grade dungeon, so you'd be plenty for it, Alex.]
Listening to Two Hundred, Alex only smiled bitterly.
If it were truly a lowest-grade dungeon, he would not be agonizing like this. No — he would not even have needed to worry.
"Then we'll be going."
Taking the commission form, Alex led Leo out of the mercenary guild building. Then he headed for the Lake House inn.
The town's streets were in disarray.
It seemed to be because families and acquaintances had been sucked into the dungeon.
"Uncle...."
At that atmosphere, Leo, who had been holding Alex's hand, gripped it all the tighter.
"It's all right, Leo."
Even as he held Leo's hand back, Alex thought that this atmosphere was somehow familiar and steadying.
It felt just like coming back to the Age of Ruin.
'Though compared with then, this isn't even the first letter of ruin.'
Cutting through that disarray, Alex and Leo returned to the Lake House inn.
But the atmosphere at the Lake House inn was not normal.
The granddaughter, Sophia, was bawling, and the inn's owner, Hallon, was nowhere to be seen.
"Sophia? Why are you crying?"
Leo, startled, quickly climbed down from his uncle's arms as though he had never been frightened at all and ran to Sophia. Then he comforted her gently.
"Le, Leo...! Waaah!!"
Seeing Leo, Sophia cried even more loudly.
Alex asked the employee, Matthew. Matthew was nearly in tears as well.
"Matthew, what happened?"
"You know a dungeon formed at the south gate? Mister Kane was on duty at the south gate, and they say he was sucked into the dungeon...."
[Oh no. This is serious.]
Alex swallowed a sigh.