Published: February 1, 2026
Gill was in despair at the sight before him.
The thing suddenly thrust before his eyes was beyond his understanding, and he simply could not accept it. Forcing his stalling thoughts to move, he tried to figure out how things had ended up like this.
Should he have shouted right away? Reached out his hand? Grabbed them and run?
“Come to think of it, Ei— um?”
“Nerv. Why’re you suddenly forgettin’ my name, dumbass.”
“I’m not dumb, I just… kinda lost track of it for a second.”
No, probably nothing he could have done would have changed anything.
Standing in the dead center of a labyrinth, Gill heaved a deep sigh, his face twisted up as he wondered what on earth he was supposed to do.
It had started that morning.
The sluggishness from conquering “Mermaid Princess’s Cave” had finally faded, and they’d gotten the feeling back in their bodies, so Lizel and the others visited the guild for the first time in a few days. The guild was abuzz over the arrival of the adventurers who had defeated the orichalcum shark; some had already shown off at the harbor, some hadn’t, but all of them crowded in, pestering them to sell some of the materials somehow.
Materials from an orichalcum shark could easily be made into equipment on par with boss materials. But because it wasn’t actually a boss, everyone was eyeing the group, hoping they might let some go a little cheaper.
However, Lizel smiled and clearly declared that they had no intention of selling anything at the moment. Shoulders slumped all around as people gave up, and at the same time, they winced under the looks Gill and the others shot them before retreating.
“By the way, Eleven, did they ever finish that knife?”
“Mm, not yet. Guess it’s too hard, an’ they still don’t really know how to work it, but they said they’d figure somethin’ out, so it’ll probably get done eventually, yeah.”
The scales of the orichalcum shark were extremely hard and extremely sharp.
That was probably why Eleven had wanted them turned into a blade as thin as paper, but it seemed to be giving the craftsmen a hard time. Whether it was stubborn pride or because Eleven had egged them on, Gill didn’t know, but once a craftsman got fired up, they were bound to make something of it.
Chatting about how they wanted to see it when it was done and that Lizel wasn’t allowed to try using it in training, they stopped in front of the quest board.
“Do either of you have anything in particular you’d like to take?”
“Whatever you want.”
“As long as it’s not underwater, anything’s fine.”
Apparently, no one wanted to do underwater labyrinths back-to-back. Lizel would avoid it too, if possible.
It wasn’t that he’d developed a phobia, but diving was a hassle he only wanted to deal with once in a while. He skimmed through everything from low-rank to high-rank requests.
“Anything’s fine,” he murmured, pushing his hair behind his ear as he peered at the lower section of the board.
“A job where you just keep chopping off fish heads.”
“Don’t.”
“No.”
“A job where you just keep squeezing fruit into barrels.”
“I said don’t.”
“Impossible.”
“For people who say ‘anything’s fine,’ you two sure complain a lot without holding back.”
Lizel laughed as if amused, and Gill sighed in exasperation, thinking, You’re the one making him say this.
It wasn’t as though Lizel himself actually wanted to spend his time on that sort of work. Maybe it was just one of those days where he felt like getting other people’s opinions.
Part of it was that none of the requests really felt like “this one, definitely.” Gill looked up at the quest board, plastered all over with an overwhelming number of requests. If nothing on the content side grabbed you, then you had to choose by client or labyrinth.
“Setting aside the underwater part, the last labyrinth was fairly standard. Maybe it’d be nice to do a slightly unusual one for the first time in a while.”
People had an impression that Lizel’s party only dove into weird labyrinths, but they usually went into fairly normal ones. “Normal” for a labyrinth still meant there would be bizarre aspects, of course.