Published: February 1, 2026
The Founding Festival ended peacefully.
After seven days of excitement all across the country came the grand cleanup. People were busy dealing with the aftermath of a festival into which they had poured everything.
Even so, there was no way the high spirits that had been soaring until the day before would suddenly crash; everyone’s expressions were bright.
Many tourists who had come for the Founding Festival were choosing to stay on, so it would likely be a while yet before the country returned to complete normalcy. “The livelier, the better,” as the landlady of the inn liked to say.
“Lizel-san, you awake?”
That same landlady lightly knocked on the door to Lizel’s room early in the morning.
But of course, he couldn’t possibly be awake. Yesterday he had gone to the castle, and on the way back there’d been a drinking party at Rei’s place.
Lizel didn’t drink, but with all kinds of noble-only fine and rare liquors lined up, there was no way Gill would refuse, and no way Eleven wouldn’t be delighted. Surrounded by three men knocking back alcohol at a furious pace, Lizel quietly drank fruit water and savored the food.
Incidentally, Eleven had struggled desperately to make Lizel drink somehow, but got dodged every time. Tough opponent.
Thanks to all that, they’d ended up getting back at a time that could hardly be called early.
Lizel hadn’t yet returned even when the landlady finally went to bed around midnight, so the not-a-morning-person Lizel was surely in the middle of a dream. It seemed wiser to give up.
Thinking she should at least tell his neighbor, the landlady moved one door over.
She knocked on the door of that equally silent room with a touch more force than before—maybe just her imagination.
“Gill, I’ve got something to ask you.”
“……”
“Don’t pretend to be asleep, honestly. You’d be up by now.”
After a few seconds, she heard footsteps approaching the door in a resigned sort of way.
Only someone with serious nerve could talk like this to the world’s famed “single blade.” From the landlady’s perspective, it was just that everyone else made too much of a fuss; if anything, he was simply a customer with basic common sense.
“He loses out because he looks fatally like a thug,” she often laughed. She really was a gutsy woman.
“…What, should I wake him?”
“I don’t really know the details, but there’s a customer here who says he has business with your party. Since you told me before that Lizel-san is the leader, I tried his room first. Will it be all right talking to you instead?”
“Customer?”
“Looks every inch an adventurer, calls himself rank s so I guess he’s amazing, right? But he didn’t seem to know your names, so I figured if he’s not an acquaintance I shouldn’t just let him in.”
Gill had no idea why a rank s adventurer would come calling.
For a moment he wondered if Lizel had pulled strings somewhere again, but if someone like that were coming Lizel would have mentioned it to Gill or the landlady. Besides, Lizel was clearly sleeping so soundly he hadn’t woken to the landlady’s voice; that meant he had no such plans.
Now and then, a high-ranking adventurer who got mad about rumors that Gill’s group outclassed them would come pick a one-sided fight, but those were always rank a, never rank s. So this probably wasn’t that.
Well, there had been that one time he’d crossed blades with a certain rank s with both sides’ consent.
“Don’t know him.”
“That so, then I’ll just turn him away.”
The only rank s adventurers in this country were basically the ones who’d been at yesterday’s party.
This visitor was someone Gill had never seen or met; they hadn’t exchanged a single word last night either. He had no idea why the man had come, and no particular reason to go out of his way to see him.
When Gill rejected it so bluntly, the landlady nodded like she’d expected that.
“You sure you don’t wanna tell Lizel-san?”
“I’ll tell him when he wakes up. If it piques his interest, he’ll go make contact on his own. Let him sleep.”