Published: August 10, 2026
Happy New Year!
Even if the demonic bird cavalry had visited Sars, the adventurers remained the same.
Day after day, they came to the guild and eagerly sifted through requests to earn their daily bread.
"Hey, weren't we in the middle of taking that one?"
"Poor thing, having such short arms."
Beside that reckless brawl, Lizel and the others were also looking for a quest.
"What kind of request are you in the mood for today?"
"A labyrinth, probably."
"What about you?"
"Anything goes."
"Damn, reliable."
With that decided, the three of them searched through the related requests, letting their eyes roam.
Requests involving labyrinths were among the most common. After all, only adventurers could handle them.
Thanks to the guild monopolizing the know-how, many adventurers never had to worry about going hungry.
"(Ah.)"
Lizel, who had been skimming from the lower ranks out of habit, suddenly noticed something.
Among the neatly arranged request sheets, he recognized the client's name on one of them.
No, more accurately, he had guessed the client from the request details.
[Please give me demonic bird feathers]
Rank: F
Client: Head of the Magic Academy's Summoning Magic Research Department
Reward: 10 silver coins per feather and up (negotiable)
Request details: Please wander around the area surrounding the demonic bird cavalry's campsite and pick them up.
Directly speaking to the demonic bird cavalry is prohibited (confirmed by the vigilante group).
Without a doubt, this was Skeleton Teacher's request.
And more than likely, he had already been told "no" by the vigilante group.
Apparently the children of Sars were also eyeing demonic bird feathers with a keen gaze, so securing them within the lake's territory was difficult.
So he had decided to ask adventurers to target the ones enjoying their little aerial stroll outside Sars' domain.
According to Nahas, demonic bird feathers were hard to pluck, so this was a request with a lot of luck involved.
"(So this is what they call a landmine quest.)"
Recently, Lizel had begun to understand that.
That said, in Lizel's mind, "landmine" did not automatically mean "avoid it," so whether he took it or not depended on the situation.
"Big Brother, what about this one?"
"Seems fine."
Even so, Eleven was in the mood to delve into a labyrinth today. Probably Gill was as well.
So, silently wishing Skeleton Teacher luck, he looked over the request the two of them were studying.
[Procure stone materials]
Rank: B
Client: Northern district sculpture workshop
Reward: 20 silver coins per piece of stone material
Request details: We want the stone material from the "Fierce Busts" said to appear in the "Art Museum Labyrinth."
With this material, we should be able to reproduce any frills or lace fabric through carving.
It must be free of dirt and cracks, and must not have been heated or soaked in water even once.
Lizel remembered the early days after he had arrived in Sars.
In a workshop he had casually peeked into, he had seen a craftsman endlessly carving a lady marionette decked out in abundant frills. He still remembered that passionate figure, clearly working out of personal obsession rather than on the job.
The two of them must have vaguely remembered it too.
They wore expressions that seemed to say, Wasn't that the one from that time?
"Can we decide on this one?"
"......"
"Yeah......"
Perhaps the image of that old, obsessively driven craftsman had left some sort of impression on them.
Gill and the others looked complicated, but not enough to flatly refuse, so they reluctantly nodded.
The labyrinth "Art Museum Labyrinth" was located a little way from Sars.
Inside, as its name suggested, it imitated a luxurious stone gallery, with corridors lined on both sides by paintings. The paintings were not limited to labyrinth paintings either; they were quite varied, showing everything from some city scene to abstract works.
Since it was part of a labyrinth, it probably wasn't something that could be damaged even if one tried, but Lizel still found himself thinking he needed to be careful not to scratch anything. It was a rather difficult labyrinth to fight in.